Fiercely sexy and piercingly sad, Ira Sachs’s new movie is a tremendous return to form after the disappointment of his very odd Isabelle Huppert vehicle Frankie. It’s a love triangle in which two gay men and a straight woman find themselves in a polycule of resentment; a celebrated young film-maker cheats on his husband with a young woman, and then in an evolvingly weak and dishonest way, tries somehow to finesse a continuing desire for his previous partner with this new heterosexual relationship. The sophisticated Venn diagram of sexual expression that he vaguely imagines is tested to destruction by the simple reality of human feelings.
The setting is Paris; Franz Rogowski plays Tomas, a brilliant, but mercurial young director whom we see in an opening scene tearing a strip off some unfortunate young actor for walking into shot the wrong way. He is married to Martin, played by Ben Whishaw, an elegant, rather diffident artist and printer who is bored at the wrap party and irritates Tomas by leaving early. So instead, Tomas dances with Agathe, played by Adèle Exarchopoulos, and goes home with her. At first Tomas is airily direct with Martin that this has happened, never apologising and asking Martin to help him work through this situation.
