How Passages Became the Summer’s Sexiest Fashion Film

On the way to see Passages—filmmaker Ira Sachs’s terminally horny, comically brutal new movie—my friend Aaron stopped outside of a café and turned to me. “Wait,” he said. “I have to change into my Franz fit.” He meant Franz Rogowski, Passages’s German star, who plays the film’s chaotic bisexual antihero, Tomas.

A few minutes later, Aaron emerged from the café’s bathroom, having swapped his office-appropriate shirt for a rave-ready black mesh top. I thought he was being ridiculous—dressing up for a weeknight screening of an indie movie—but by the time we arrived at the IFC Center in downtown Manhattan, I realized the joke was on me. In the theater, I spotted at least two other audience members in Franz Rogowski cosplay. Later, I overheard someone else—themself in a halter tank Rogowski might wear as Tomas—gesture toward the screening room and animatedly exclaim, “There are a lot of homosexuals in here.” Read more at GQ.