Sixty years before this film was released, James Burge QC found himself in court defending Stephen Ward in the trial associated with the Profumo affair. He famously described his client as ‘a man with an artistic temperament and obviously with high sexual proclivities leading a dissolute life’.

Ira Sachs’s Passages, released last year, features a central character could be similarly described. Sixty years on, however, the social outrage is mostly absent, and there’s no hint of political intrigue in this story. And so we’re left with ninety minutes of modern Parisian melodrama, a loose love triangle that I found neither interesting nor absorbing.

I don’t really mean to lay into it too much: it’s clear that the film is held in high regard by critics, so it must surely have a lot of technical merit, even if it didn’t stand out to me. The film had the feel of a passion project for the director and cast, and in that sense, I’m glad that it exists. The cinematography was impressive, capturing Paris beautifully, and the performances were compelling, even if the characters didn’t resonate with me.

It just wasn’t for me. Sitting on the sofa, my mind kept wandering, and it took some effort not to just give up on the film around the 30-minute mark. For all its abundant qualities, I simply didn’t feel any personal connection with it. Your mileage may vary.