Ira Sachs Tells Us Why ‘Passages’ Needed Unrated Sex to Say What Dialogue Could Not

After of two decades of filmmaking, from “Married Life” to “Love Is Strange,” Ira Sachs has made his tenth feature with the alluring “Passages.” The unrestrained, brazenly sexy love triangle starring an all-start cast of Franz Rogowski, Ben Whishaw, and Adèle Exarchopoulos hit big at both Sundance and Berlin.

Last January, Sachs enjoyed holding court at a Sundance steakhouse as distributors made offers. Although the MPA Ratings Board slapped an NC-17 on “Passages,” winning suitor MUBI will release the French-produced film unrated on August 4 before making Sachs’ film available online to its 12 million subscribers.

The filmmaker Zoomed with me from the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel.

The following interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Anne Thompson: Twelve million. That’s a significant number!

Ira Sachs: They understand that there’s a large audience who is interested in personal filmmaking that has been neglected by Hollywood. There’s no interest in the kind of work I do here. I’m privileged enough to get to make these movies. So there’s been a change, a shift, which is excluding handmade cinema.

Like several of your recent films, “Passages” feels European, like the intimate movies that they make in France or Germany. It’s in English but it doesn’t feel like an American film.

That’s because American film has changed so much. Does it feel different than “Coming Home”? Does it feel different than “Ordinary People”? Does it feel different than “Five Easy Pieces”? These are long histories that we begin to believe never existed in this culture. And they did. Where’s the Cassavetes of our time, making 14 of those films? Not one, not just two. The space for sustained careers is getting narrower. And that’s the challenge for American filmmakers.

Why is your story located in Paris?

Paris is a city that I first lived in when I was 20 years old, and I didn’t know anybody and I didn’t speak good French and I went to the movies two or three times a day. I saw 197 movies in three months. It’s a city of cinema and it changed my life. And since then, it’s the city that I’ve had relationships in. I’ve had friendships, I’ve had sex. I’ve had breakups. And I’ve cried there.

How did you feel about the NC-17 rating?

The MPA Code is an extension of the Hays Code, which was written by the Catholic Church. I will say, I prefer the pre-Code movies, and I want to be a part of that history. This kind of censorship discourages people from making honest work. That’s the problem. The impact is in the residual effects of creating a sense of fear in in artists that they shouldn’t make certain kinds of work if they want to be acceptable. In Spain, this film was rated 12: 12-year-olds and older are encouraged to go see this film. Unbelievable.

Why didn’t you appeal?

Mubi is supporting the film as it is, and it would be impossible to separate the film from the sex in the film. Sex is certainly a phrase and a chapter in the film.

How did you come up with the idea of a man happily functioning in a gay marriage who gets the urge to start a relationship with a beautiful woman?

The generation that this film is written about doesn’t look at labels in the same way as our generation. The boundaries are less rigid for younger people than they seem to have been for me and you. When I wrote the film, I thought identity would be central to the content of the film. When it was played by these actors, that identity labeling disappears because that’s just not who they are.

What did these three actors bring?

I saw Franz in Michael Haneke’s “Happy End.” Specifically, there’s a scene where he does a karaoke performance of Sia’s “Chandelier” and he’s an animal in the best of ways. He’s like a creature of cinema. I wrote the film with Franz in mind and then he wanted to do it. If Franz is this animal, Ben is a knife. He’s so precise. You don’t even know it’s coming. But it’s magnificent, what happens when Ben starts to act. In American Playhouse’s “Who Am I This Time?” a community theater actor played by Chris Walken is very modest and humble and doesn’t take any space and then suddenly he’s Stanley Kowalski and he’s like a magnet. And Ben is like that. It happens in an instant and it’s so sharp.

What about the magnetic pull of Adèle Exarchopoulos?

Adèle is the Jeanne Moreau of our time. She’s of the earth and of the sky. That combination to me is so attractive. She’s the nicest woman, but there’s always something that is being withheld. There’s just the smallest amount of mystery. Something else always seems to be going on. And yet she’s present as an actress in a way that I’ve never seen before. She doesn’t have a false moment. She’s an extraordinary creature and actress.

[French dramatic comedy] “Zero Fucks Given” is about stewardesses. And it’ll change the way you think of flying forever. She’s so brilliant in the film. [In “Passages”] she plays a Parisian elementary school teacher, but she’s costumed like Brigitte Bardot because the movie is both real and unreal. It has the texture of realistic cinema, but it’s trying to play with the pleasures of cinema at the same time, which is color and beauty and emotion.

How difficult was it to map out the sex scenes? Did you use an intimacy coordinator?

No, the relationship that I have with the actors was very trusting. They established for me the boundaries. And then there’s no conversation around what will be or what won’t be in the film. They share with me what they’re comfortable with, and we move from there.

The film has a trajectory that feels inevitable and tragic. A trajectory of loss.

But also the loss of power for a man at the center of the film. Franz and I watched a lot of James Cagney movies because he’s someone Orson Welles said was the greatest actor ever in front of the camera. And he has no fear of being bad, but in a way that’s so compelling and beautiful. So he gave us permission in a certain way. To not try to hide the ugly corners of the character, but also to relish in the pleasure of that excess.

But he’s also so unaware. You would think he would be smarter.

That can be said about all of us. Love is important. A director who saw the film in Paris came to me after a screening and said, “You really loved those three, didn’t you?” And I felt like he understood what had happened on the set for me through the film, in the sense that I just took so much pleasure. [Hal] Hartley in the film “Trust” says “love equals respect plus admiration plus trust.” I had those things for these three actors in a way that was unique in my experience.

When you show this film to audiences on the circuit from Sundance and Berlin and beyond, what has surprised you about audience reaction?

The film plays as a social comedy in a way that I didn’t expect because you’re watching a character who is breaking norms right and left.

There’s something exciting about that, right? Moviegoers love rebels. Because they’re breaking out of what they can’t do.

So they’re playing out fantasies.

That’s it. But in the end, order has to be restored. Isn’t there a part of you that is Rogowski’s director character?

In my films if there’s one through line, it’s men behaving badly. I recognize in myself that my actions don’t always follow my beliefs. It’s in that conflict that I find drama and human experience.

We’re heading in a dire direction with the festivals coming up amid the strikes and companies pulling movies out of schedules. Are you worried about what’s going to happen to our industry?

I’m worried about my friends who don’t have jobs. It’s a moment of great crisis for individuals and for our community.

What’s your next movie?

I’m making a film in November with Ben Whishaw called “Peter Hujar’s Day” about the photographer Peter Hujar and his friend Linda in December of 1974 in New York City. This is a film about what it is to be an artist among artists in a city where no one was making any money.

MUBI will release “Passages” in theaters on Friday, August 4.