# Passages Review: Why the Acclaimed Drama Falls Flat

*Film, TV & Music · Marcus Reed · 2026-10-02*

## TL;DR

Passages is a 2023 French drama presented on MUBI, with Franz Rogowski in the lead, Ben Whishaw as his husband, and Adele Exarchopoulos as the woman who enters their marriage. It follows a man who leaves his husband for a woman and then wants both. Critics adored it; I found the characters too thin to care about.

## Key facts

- Passages is a 2023 French drama that MUBI acquired and presented on its streaming service.
- Franz Rogowski takes the lead, and his reputation in unusual roles is a big part of the film's draw.
- Ben Whishaw plays the husband at the center of the triangle.
- Adele Exarchopoulos plays the woman who becomes the third point of that triangle.
- The film drew strong critical praise and an unusually explicit sex scene that became a talking point.

## Ortamlarda Bolca Övülen Passages Filminin Açık Sözlü Bir Eleştirisi

*Passages* is a 2023 French drama, and it arrived on MUBI wrapped in the kind of praise that makes a curious viewer clear their evening. That was the setup. The letdown came fast.

I went in expecting something enormous. Talented actors, a festival buzz that refused to die, and a streaming platform that practically handed the film to me on a plate. What I got instead was that familiar sinking feeling: fooled again.

Not by the film, exactly. By the noise around it. There is a particular kind of critical chorus that inflates a movie until it floats well above its own weight, and a particular generational habit of anointing new heroes and drowning their work in scores and superlatives before anyone has actually sat down to watch it. I keep telling myself I will not fall for it. I fall for it every time. Though honestly, how else are we supposed to know anything without pressing play?

Franz Rogowski, whom some critics treat as one of the most sensational actors of recent years, carries the lead. That reputation is a matter of taste, and this viewer's taste did not survive contact with the role. The performance is there. The film around it is not.

What makes the disappointment sting is the gap between what *Passages* promises and what it delivers. It sets up a bisexual protagonist caught in a love triangle between his husband and a woman, and it clearly believes that configuration is doing heavy lifting. It is not. The framing is the whole trick, and once you see the trick, there is nothing underneath but what the reviewer sees as a selfish, narcissistic man drifting through other people's lives.

So here is the honest starting point of this **Passages film review**: a film can be admired in the right rooms and still leave you cold in your own. The praise is loud. The film is quiet in all the wrong ways. And the frustration of being sold greatness you cannot find is a story worth telling plainly.

## The Film Builds a Very Clichéd Love Triangle

At its core, Passages sets up a love triangle that feels instantly familiar: a bisexual protagonist, his husband, and a woman who enters the picture. That setup is real, and it is the film's structural spine. I went in hoping that the bisexual angle would be the thing that set it apart, the detail that turned a worn-out shape into something new. It doesn't. The film puts that context front and center, then quietly lets it dissolve into a story about a man who treats other people as options.

What I wanted was a fresh take on relationships that don't define themselves by gender. What the film delivers, in my reading, is a character study of someone who never looks past his own appetites. And here is where the design starts to work against itself. In trying to keep the audience at an emotional distance, in trying to reinvent how human tension gets staged, the film turns its own characters into cardboard soldiers. One-dimensional. No depth. The protagonist comes across as crude, flat, and dull.

Here is the sharp point underneath all of this. The good films, the ones that last, take a character like this and make them monumental. They find the weight inside the selfishness. This film doesn't. It wants to comment on Gen Z relationships and the superficiality of how people connect now, on people drowning in complicated feelings while surrounded by endless options, unable to find any real subtlety or depth in themselves. But the moment a film tries to hold up a mirror to that, it risks becoming the very thing it's mocking. That is the trap the film falls into.

There's a deeper complaint underneath too. The film never asks why its characters are the way they are, or how they got there. It ignores the events that would make them feel real, and in doing so it grants them a kind of false originality. As if refusing to explain a person were the same as capturing them.

And then there are the sex scenes, which the film treats as its own act of courage. I'm not buying it. Because the whole design is detached, the intimacy lands as superficial and artificial. A film can skip the why and the how, sure. But if it wants to be genuinely good, genuinely different, it can't just erase the weight and scope of the situation it put on screen and call that explanation. The supposed boldness of those scenes carries a lot of ambition, and, in this telling, not much else.

## Franz Rogowski'nin Performansı ve Filmin Sözde Cesareti

While writing this Passages film review, the hardest part was this: the film's biggest asset is also its biggest disappointment. Franz Rogowski. The idea that he is one of the most sensational actors of recent years is a subjective critical view, not a settled fact, yet the film leans on that perception hard, as if his strangeness could paper over the gaps in the story.

It can't. An actor's presence does not have to explain the emotional fire his character has fallen into, and the film stumbles exactly there. Its supposedly detached stance builds a wall between viewer and work, and behind that wall the characters turn into depthless, one-dimensional cardboard soldiers.

### Fransız Usulü Melodramı Yenileme İddiası

The director's wish to refresh what some critics call the French-style love melodrama is an interpretation, not an objective genre label. Still, when that ambition meets the film's self-admiring grip on its own feelings, what's left is emotional and aesthetic clumsiness. The film thinks it is being brave in its sex scenes, yet it keeps the same distance when it should be explaining the heat its characters are caught in, and the whole design stays thoroughly superficial and artificial.

### Sabun Köpüğü Gibi Bir Seyir Başarısı

The film's commercial pull and its buzz are, in one critic's eyes, a soap bubble: swelling endlessly with shape, style, promises and supposed courage, then floating away with a single breath. An "eh, fine" kind of buzz. The comparison says the film is a balloon inflating itself, hollow inside and shiny outside.

### Ben Whishaw'ın İncelikli Oyunu

Ben Whishaw, by contrast, manages a nuanced performance despite all that emotional constipation. He makes his character feel relatively real even with what the reviewer calls the director's clumsiness. That too is a subjective view, but inside the film's general emptiness, Whishaw's work stands out as one of the few things an audience can hold on to.

## Ben Whishaw'ın İncelikli Oyunu

Ben Whishaw, in Passages, delivers a nuanced performance despite the film's overall emotional coldness. Even with what the reviewer calls the director's clumsiness, he manages to make his character feel relatively real. It is praise, and deserved praise at that.

In the context of this Passages film review, Whishaw's performance is one of the film's sturdiest legs. In a production that leans on Franz Rogowski's sensational acting and its MUBI presentation, things shift when Whishaw steps on screen. He carries his character's inner world beyond that cardboard soldier mold. The director's detached storytelling cracks a little under the actor's subtlety.

As the reviewer concedes, Whishaw offers the audience a real human being despite the film's shortcomings. That is not an easy job, especially in a script that leaves its characters one-dimensional. Whishaw reaches past the material he was handed and lets his character breathe.

In the end, this is a detail that Passages film review pieces often skip: Whishaw's presence is the most important thing that makes the film watchable. Despite everything working against him, the actor makes his own case.


## Frequently asked questions

**What is the 2023 film Passages about?**

Passages is a 2023 French drama built around a bisexual protagonist caught in a love triangle with his husband and a woman. The film places that relationship at the very center of its story, then follows what happens when desire, marriage and attraction start pulling in different directions.

**Why do critics praise Passages but some viewers find it hollow?**

Critics heaped praise on Passages, and it was presented on MUBI, yet this Passages film review argues the acclaim was inflated. The reviewer says the film keeps the audience at arm's length on purpose, and that distance flattens the characters into one-dimensional figures with no real depth.

**How does Franz Rogowski perform in Passages?**

Franz Rogowski takes the lead, and the reviewer finds his performance overhyped. The film leans hard on his reputation in unusual roles, but according to the original account, Rogowski is regarded by some as one of the most sensational actors of recent years, a subjective label rather than a settled fact.

**Did Ben Whishaw's performance in Passages stand out?**

Yes. Ben Whishaw delivers a nuanced performance that the reviewer singles out for praise, reportedly managing to make his character feel real despite the film's emotional coldness and what the reviewer calls the director's clumsiness. Whishaw, the reviewer concedes, earns his credit here.

**Was Passages well received on MUBI?**

Passages was presented on MUBI and drew praise there, but the reviewer came away disappointed. The buildup from critics and cinephile circles raised expectations, and the film did not deliver on them for this particular viewer.

**What makes the love triangle in Passages clichéd?**

The triangle centers on a character the reviewer sees as selfish and narcissistic, and it lacks depth. Once the bisexual angle stops feeling like a genuine difference, the story collapses into a typical melodrama, a familiar shape rather than a fresh one.

**Is Passages worth watching for fans of French drama?**

This Passages film review suggests it may disappoint. The reviewer calls the film superficial and emotionally hollow, a soap bubble that swells with style and supposed boldness but floats away the moment you blow on it. French drama fans should temper expectations. Editorial note: This piece is a critical opinion, and details about the film's production and release are presented as generally reported, with anything less certain hedged rather than stated as fact.

Canonical: https://curio.madeda.com/passages-review-why-the-acclaimed-drama-falls-flat/