The Pass

Two young footballers in a hotel room. They play their first professional match tomorrow and they are tense. They joke, they wrestle, and at one point they kiss. The next morning one of them says it was a joke. The film is in three parts and each takes place in a hotel room. In the second, five years have passed; Jason has become a star, has married, and there is someone else in the room. In the third another ten years pass. The same two men meet again and their lives have entirely separated. Ben A. Williams directs. Russell Tovey plays Jason and Arinzé Kene plays Ade. The source is John Donnelly's play; the writer adapted it himself. The play was staged in London and Russell Tovey played the same part on stage. Its form comes from the theatre; three scenes, one kind of location and almost nothing shot outside. The matter it treats is how closed football is; the narrative does not turn it into a story of coming out. The second part is its hardest passage and a third person is there; the scene is long and uncomfortable. The change across the jumps in time is understood only through how the characters speak. Its limit is form; because the stage structure is kept it is narrow as cinema and some sections run long. Who it is for: viewers who like films drawn from the stage and drama in closed spaces. Who it is not for: it is narrow, loaded with talk, and the ending offers no hope.