The Pass (2016, UK, Dir. Ben A. Williams, 88 mins, 15) - LGBT History Month screening

Director: Ben A Williams ● Starring: Russell Tovey, Arinze Kene and Lisa McGrillis. 

With a script adapted by John Donnelly from his three act stage play, the film follows their subsequent lives and careers through act 2 – five years later – and act 3, which is set ten years after ‘the kiss’.  

Two young footballers, Jason (Tovey) and Ade (Kene) share a room the night before the most important match of their careers so far.  Restless, they can’t sleep and joke and banter around, until one kisses the other…The storyline shows how one small moment can have a huge impact in one’s life. 

A great performance by Tovey (The History Boys, Him & Her, Being Human) leads a small but confident cast in Williams’s well-directed first feature film.  Some reviewers have criticised The Kiss for being ‘a film of the play’, failing to exploit the wider canvas film offers to break free of the confines of a stage.  (Preminger’s approach in taking Carmen Jones, recently screened at David Lean, out of the theatre and into the wider world is a good example of this.)  An alternative view is that confining the action and actors to claustrophobic hotel rooms is metaphor for the closeted lifestyle of today’s ‘too-much-too-soon’ young footballers.

With one showing at 7.30pm ONLY. 

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