Franz Rogowski can make a bicycle ride or a step into somebody else's room tell us how a man treats people. We rate him highly, especially when a director lets his charm turn ugly.
Fi1m perspective
In Passages (2023), Franz Rogowski cycles standing on the pedals and walks into other people's rooms as though he owns them. His Tomas is a film director whose need to have his own way starts with telling an actor how to walk downstairs. The impatience is there before anybody has to explain him. Rogowski makes that behaviour engrossing without pretending it is harmless, and he is the strongest reason to see Ira Sachs's film.
Victoria (2015) brought his breakthrough, while Transit (2018) and In the Aisles (2018) established him in leading roles. Christian Petzold directed Transit and worked with him again on Undine (2020). Rogowski gives directors something useful: a character need not speak for us to start wondering what he wants. Sachs makes particularly sharp use of that quality, letting Tomas's movements show how little he considers the people around him.
Khadija Zeggaï's cropped jumpers and mesh top help, giving Tomas clothes that demand attention as persistently as his behaviour does. We found Tomas horrible company and could not stop watching him, because Rogowski makes each switch from charm to selfishness so clear. Ben Whishaw's Martin and Adèle Exarchopoulos's Agathe absorb the damage. Sachs is less attentive to them, particularly Agathe, and that keeps a good film from going further.
Andrea Arnold's Bird (2024) asks for something gentler, with less consistent results. As the stranger Bailey meets on the marshes, Rogowski speaks softly, hops rather than walks and asks polite questions of people who want to hit him. The early uncertainty works: his kindness is appealing, but his movements make him hard to place. Later, Arnold makes his gentleness feel like a device, and Rogowski cannot make up for her uncertainty about what he is there to do. For an introduction, choose Passages, provided spending an evening with Tomas does not sound too much like work.
Biography
Franz Rogowski is a German actor and dancer. Born on 2 February 1986 in Freiburg im Breisgau, he trained in dance and theatre in Germany, Switzerland and Austria, and performed on stages including the Thalia Theater Hamburg and Schaubühne Berlin before moving into film.
He gained international attention with his role in the single-take film Victoria (2015). Subsequent credits include Happy End (2017), Transit (2018), Undine (2020), Great Freedom (2021) and In the Aisles (2018). He has worked with directors including Michael Haneke, Christian Petzold, Terrence Malick and Andrea Arnold. In 2023 he played Tomas in Passages and in 2024 appeared as Bird in Bird.
