Afire

A German film about a writer on a writing retreat by the Baltic. He’s not a very pleasant person, so his relationships don’t work out – people don’t like him very much. As his story develops there’s a parallel thread of approaching forest fires, which eventually threaten where they are staying, and lead to the deaths of two of the party. A nice correlative to the emotional damage caused by the writer’s selfishness.

Passages

A film about a film director, who is not a very pleasant person. He’s in a relationship with Ben Wishaw (well, his character), but then falls for a young woman, leaves Ben and shacks up with her. He then tries to keep Ben by sleeping with him again, but eventually the woman and Ben meet up and realise what an unpleasant person the director is. The film ends with the director cycling madly through Paris trying to patch up the mess of his own making.

How they are related

Unpleasant blokes messing up their relationships.

What’s more interesting is the contrast between Passages and Past Lives: two love-triangles, one perfectly held together by all three protagonists, the other all over the place through the selfishness of one of them.