If the promise of hot actors engaging in a messy, would-be ménage à trois isn’t enough to entice you to go see Passages, the new film by Ira Sachs, maybe its beautiful bedding will. Vulture senior editor Madeline Leung Coleman first tipped us off: “Everyone who sees the movie, which is hands down the sexy adult movie of the season, comes out raving about the movie’s bed linens.” Makes sense, because “the film largely takes place in beds,” says Coleman. “There’s a blue set, in particular, that everyone is obsessed with.”
As someone who worked in the film industry in a past life (and is currently the Strategist’s de facto bedding expert), I had to see the sheets (and the movie) for myself. For context, Passages takes place in Paris and a country location just outside it, where Tomas (Franz Rogowski) and Martin (Ben Whishaw), a married couple, meet Agathe (Adèle Exarchopoulos), a schoolteacher. Tomas, a movie director, begins an affair with Agathe and eventually moves in with her, tearing up his marriage to Martin while insisting on maintaining a relationship with him. All this to say, it’s a bedroom drama, and so, naturally, the beds take center stage in key scenes in the film.
The sets are all exquisitely appointed, too, so I called up Passages’s production designer, Pascale Consigny, to find out exactly where the sheets in question came from. “You’ll maybe be a little bit disappointed, because I have no real story about the bedding,” she tells me from France. The blue sheets that Coleman mentioned are shown in Tomas and Martin’s country house. Turns out, they’re Consigny’s own. “I didn’t buy them for the film. They’re my own, and I’ve had them for a very long time. I use them all the time,” she says.
[Editor’s note: Merci lists all prices in euros, so the prices shown here and below are an approximate conversion to U.S. dollars.]
The sheets are from Merci, a concept boutique in Paris, and are made of linen. They’re actually pale green (celadon green, to be precise) and really quite striking. The color profile also seems to change from scene to scene, going from dark to light, depending on the time of day. (The film still, above, renders them a bit bluer than in the actual movie.) Conveniently, Merci ships to the U.S., so you can re-create the couple’s bedscape (but hopefully not their drama). You can buy a bedding bundle or each piece separately.
At Agathe’s apartment, the bed is outfitted with sheets that are a bit easier to come by. “I’m sorry for making this sound like advertising for the brand, but I must confess that they are from Ikea,” says Consigny. There are two sets: A dark blue set that’s a backdrop in a love scene, and a more subdued striped set that grounds Agathe in a vulnerable moment.
Finally, in what is the film’s longest sex scene, we see a gorgeous mohair blanket in a caramel color that Consigny found at a secondhand store. She doesn’t know what the brand is, but she thinks it could be from Brun de Vian-Tiran, a 200-year-old French manufacturer of natural blankets. For something a little more affordable, here’s one from Design Within Reach in a similar color.
[Editor’s note: Brun de Vian-Tiran lists all prices in euros, so the price shown here is an approximate conversion to U.S. dollars.]
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