Passages
MUBI | Release Date: August 4, 2023 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
80
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 41 Critic Reviews
Positive:
40
Mixed:
1
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
The Irish TimesDonald ClarkeAug 31, 2023
What emerges is a torrid, gripping drama that acknowledges not just what damage the careless can wreak but also to what extent the responsible often conspire in their own annihilation. Read full review
100
ObserverRex ReedAug 7, 2023
Sachs gives his actors the space to develop complex characters that make us feel their unhappiness and disillusion. The film captures the moods of relationships in transition without ever being condescending or judgmental. The sex scenes and nudity are so graphic that it’s safe to say this is not a film for everyone, but is as relentlessly moving as it is fascinating. Read full review
100
Rolling StoneDavid FearAug 7, 2023
You can find hundreds of egotistical monsters who’ve graced movie screens (don’t get us started on the ones working behind the scenes; that’s a whole other piece), but few of them can compare to Tomas Freiburg. Read full review
95
Film ThreatSumner ForbesMar 1, 2024
Filled with affecting intimacy and some of the best (and essential) sex scenes in recent memory, Passages is one of Sachs’ absolute best films and further solidifies the exemplary status of the three lead performers—an essential 2023 film. Read full review
91
Original-CinChris KnightAug 10, 2023
Sometimes, in equations of the heart, you can solve for X. And sometimes it remains stubbornly, soul-stabbingly unknown. Read full review
91
The PlaylistCharles BramescoJan 28, 2023
Adroit casting, writing, editing, performing and costuming shade the outline of an affair to a finely sharpened emotional realism, the cycles of fighting and reconciling we’ve all seen before regaining in rawness as if we’re now the ones living through it. Read full review
90
Vanity FairRichard LawsonAug 10, 2023
It’s a piercing and often very funny character piece, a study of narcissism masked, at least in part, by bourgeois, Millennial understandings of progressive coupling. But Sachs, who is in his 50s, has not made some condemnatory thinkpiece about what’s wrong with a generation. The people of Passages could, in some senses, be from any time; mercurial partners have existed forever. Read full review
90
TimeStephanie ZacharekAug 4, 2023
This is a smart, lustrous film, and a bracingly honest one, the kind of movie that leaves you feeling both invigorated and a little blue. Read full review
90
The Hollywood ReporterJon FroschJan 28, 2023
With the steadfast lack of melodrama we’ve come to expect from him, the writer-director packs more incident, life and unassuming complexity into 90 minutes than most filmmakers muster in twice that run time. Read full review
88
Washington PostAnn HornadayAug 9, 2023
Smart, sensuous and stylish, Passages is all about pleasure: the giving of it, the getting of it, the art and pursuit of it, and what it all can cost. Read full review
88
RogerEbert.comGlenn KennyAug 3, 2023
Ira Sachs is one of American cinema’s most reliable crafters of human-scaled cinematic dramas. That description doesn’t sound too terribly exciting, so I should assure you that Passages is some kind of time at the movies—a briskly-moving, turbulent, emphatically sexy, deliberately exasperating love triangle in crazy times. Read full review
88
Slant MagazinePat BrownFeb 22, 2023
While there’s much acute pain in this compact but resonant drama, it can also be funny in a way that smacks of self-deprecation. Read full review
85
The AtlanticHannah GiorgisAug 8, 2023
Unrelenting and frank, Passages captures the creeping discontents of its Fassbinder-lite protagonist without losing sight of how his transgressions affect those around him. Read full review
85
SlashfilmBarry LevittFeb 1, 2023
This is Ira Sach's best film in years, a magnetic, emotional, and hugely watchable exploration of love and sex in the modern age. Those of us who've been following Rogowski for a while have been ready for this, and "Passages" might just be the film that makes him a superstar. Read full review
85
Paste MagazineJacob OllerJan 31, 2023
Passages is this close, painful, sexy twisting of the screws at its best, as Sachs and his frequent co-writer Mauricio Zacharias observe the havoc wreaked by a bisexual brat’s latest dalliance. Read full review
83
IndieWireDavid EhrlichJan 28, 2023
The raw and resonant Passages is the kind of fuck around and find out love triangle that rings true because we aspire to its sexier moments but see ourselves in its most selfish ones. Read full review
83
The Film StageJordan RaupJan 28, 2023
Ira Sachs’ radiantly sexual three-hander Passages couldn’t have assembled a finer trio of actors to explore modern love in all its splendor and messiness. Read full review
80
CineVueChristopher MachellSep 4, 2023
A pointed, revealing study of selfishness and an all-too familiar portrait of emotional indulgence, bolstered by three excellent lead performances. Read full review
80
The Observer (UK)Mark KermodeSep 3, 2023
Most modern American film-makers rarely get the chance to conjure frank sex scenes that serve an explicit narrative purpose, so it’s significant that Sachs has cited the Italian director Pier Paolo Pasolini and the Belgian film-maker Chantal Akerman (along with fellow Europeans Maurice Pialat and Luchino Visconti) as inspirations for this French-German co-production. Read full review
80
EmpireKambole CampbellSep 1, 2023
Anchored by excellent performances from its three intertwined leads, Passages is alternately tender and thorny in its close character study of a narcissist, and as a romantic drama with no winners. Read full review
80
The IndependentClarisse LoughreyAug 31, 2023
Passages is smart and precise about other people’s messes. It’s a way to indulge in the most volatile parts of ourselves without ever feeling like we’re about to lose control. Read full review
80
Little White LiesDavid JenkinsAug 31, 2023
The film makes for a involving and often mordantly funny three-hander, and Exarchopoulos and Whishaw are both superb despite being given the slightly thankless task of clearing things up in Tomas’s wake. Read full review
80
The GuardianPeter BradshawAug 30, 2023
In Passages the sex is the plot: the plot of all our lives. Read full review
80
Arizona RepublicBill GoodykoontzAug 7, 2023
Rogowski carries the film, and it is quite the performance — one whose appeal is difficult to work out in your head, which makes it all the better. Read full review
80
The New YorkerAnthony LaneAug 4, 2023
Why put yourself through Passages, then, if it’s so painful a trip? Largely because of Rogowski. Tomas is a beast, and were he played by an actor of less vehemence he’d be a pain in the neck and nothing more. As it is, he pulls us into the jungle. Read full review
80
Los Angeles TimesJustin ChangAug 2, 2023
Tomas is an inimitably singular creature. Loathsome and magnetic, infuriating and unforgettable, he is, by several bed lengths, the most dynamic protagonist Sachs has given us, a vessel of pure, untrammeled id. Read full review
80
The TelegraphTim RobeyFeb 24, 2023
This is Sachs’s eighth film and one of his best. Read full review
80
Time OutStephen A. RussellFeb 21, 2023
Right down to a final shot that’s scored joyously by a brass band, Sachs delivers an achingly beautiful film that’s sexy, sad and so very French. Read full review
80
The New YorkerRichard BrodyJan 30, 2023
The abruptness, the willfulness, the ferocity of Passages reflect, more than any other film by an American director that I’ve seen in a while, the influence of Pialat. Read full review
80
Screen DailyJonathan RomneyJan 28, 2023
Its dramatic heft and its stars’ upfront audacity make it a sexy proposition in every respect. Read full review
80
VarietyPeter DebrugeJan 28, 2023
Sachs excels at investigating thorny, uncomfortable situations, and he treats all three characters fairly here, which allows audiences to decide which one they identify with. Read full review
80
The GuardianBenjamin LeeJan 28, 2023
Rogowski makes for a believably odious yet charming cad while Whishaw and Exarchopoulos neatly underplay their heartbreak, subtly showing the toll of putting up with someone who mistreats you and then putting up with yourself for allowing it. Read full review
78
Austin ChronicleKimberley JonesAug 10, 2023
In Passages, Sachs’ enthralling eighth feature, he and his regular co-screenwriter Mauricio Zacharias return to the more experimental bent of Keep the Lights On, echoing that film’s elliptical nature and naturalistic presentation of sex, its dizzyingly destructive relationships and Euro-arthouse affect. Read full review
75
The Associated PressLindsey BahrAug 2, 2023
Some have likened Passages to a horror movie (though aren’t all coming of age movies horrors in some way?) Regardless, it would make a fitting double feature with Christian Petzold’s “Afire”. They are both films that let you dabble in the feeling of having had a semester abroad, tumultuous feelings and all, without all the actual emotional fallout or jetlag. Read full review
75
ColliderRoss BonaimeFeb 9, 2023
Sachs’ story comes to life thanks to these three excellent performances that aren't afraid to explore the selfishness and desires of passion, in a story that finds the power of shared pain and love. Read full review
70
New York Magazine (Vulture)Alison WillmoreAug 4, 2023
Tomas is the film’s most captivating element as well as its limiting factor because it’s only possible to bear so much time in his company. It’s a testament to Rogowski’s performance that Tomas’s appeal remains apparent despite his behavior, that his gravitational pull is understandable even as you long for the others to escape it. Read full review
70
Screen RantMae AbdulbakiFeb 3, 2023
Bolstered by fabulous performances by its lead cast, Passages delicately and intimately explores a love affair that goes awry because of one person’s decisions. Read full review
70
Rolling StoneK. Austin CollinsJan 26, 2023
The actors, working from a script by Sachs and Mauricio Zacharias, and swept up in Sachs’s characteristically perceptive, subtle dramatic style, make the whims and wills of these people feel consistent and predictable, which is to say, true to life. Read full review
65
TheWrapKristen LopezAug 4, 2023
As great as Rogowski is to watch, though, Passages is all about Adèle Exarchopoulos, who turns in a better performance than she did in “Blue is the Warmest Color.” Read full review
63
Boston GlobeOdie HendersonAug 10, 2023
If you can admire a movie’s technique (and its hotness) above all else, you’ll enjoy Passages. For me, it’s an intriguing near-miss. Read full review
50
The New York TimesAmy NicholsonAug 3, 2023
The misery unfurls in a straight timeline of dramatic scenes that leap over the lived-in moments that make up a relationship. Read full review
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