THE PASSING/YR YMADAWIAD (Dir: Gareth Bryn)
The Passing is a fascinating contradiction of a film, where nothing is quite what it appears to be. Not only does it manage to tell a story which feels simple and complex at the same time, but its small-scale is offset with hugely cinematic visuals and bubbling tension.
Set deep in the Welsh mountains, with most of the action taking place on a secluded farm, the plot plays out as a low-key three-hander which could quite easily make the leap from screen to stage. In the film’s quiet opening, we’re introduced to the proprietor of the farm, Stanley, whose peace is disturbed by the wailing of a car horn. On investigation, he finds a man and a woman who have been in a pretty severe car accident, and offers them his farm as a place to recover.
To say anymore about the premise feels like it would be doing a disservice to the film. Chances are that the less you know going into The Passing, the more likely you are to enjoy it. Whilst it’s difficult to pin down to a genre – it often flits between the supernatural and the melodramatic – it could be best described as a tightly wound, character-driven mystery that constantly toys with your perceptions of the three leads.
Perhaps the biggest compliment I could pay The Passing, and director Gareth Bryn in particular, is that at times it feels like the type of film that Alfred Hitchcock would have made if he had been born in the valleys. Not only does it have that sense of Hitchcockian voyeurism running throughout it – much of the film’s narrative development is derived from a look, glance, or from people watching each other in general – but the characters themselves feel like they could easily be dropped into one of Hitchcock’s pictures and hardly look out of place.
You have the two young lovers, seemingly on the run from something or someone, whose idea to stay at Stanley’s farm implies sinister intentions. Stanley himself could quite easily share some DNA with Norman Bates; he’s a loner who appears to be gentle and kind, but who equally feels like he could be dangerous if he were to ever snap and get angry. The comparisons may admittedly only be slight, but they are certainly there to be made.
Thematically, there’s a lot of darkness being dealt with – a statement which shouldn’t surprise anybody familiar with the hit series Hinterland, which Gareth Bryn and Ed Talfan – the film’s director and writer – have worked on previously. As Talfan’s script slowly unravels its secrets, all the while picking at the knots of tension that run through its fabric, sex, death, murder, faith and identity are all touched upon in a very subversive way.
To counteract the dark, however, is the eye-widening and truly impressive cinematography from Richard Stoddard. Much like his previous work on Hinterland, Stoddard manages to capture the painterly beauty of the Welsh landscape quite unlike anything else I’ve seen. Arguably, it’s the stunning visuals which are the strongest element of The Passing, and which demand that this be seen on the big-screen.
The performances from the three leads are also impressive, especially the one given by Mark Lewis Jones as Stanley. It’s an almost silent performance which is full of nuance, one that can make you feel empathy with him in one moment and fear him the next.
However, The Passing‘s greatest strength is ultimately its one pitfall. Whilst there’s a lot to admire about the piece, from its beautiful visuals down to its rich substance, the fact that it remains a mystery once the credits have started to roll can be quite frustrating. There are moments where you can’t help but wish that Gareth Bryn and Ed Talfan would commit to a particular genre, or at least provide some answers to the many questions that the film raises. Those answers never really come.
This isn’t necessarily a criticism, as this was quite clearly deliberate. Bryn and Talfan want to make their audience think about and debate the events of the film, with its ambiguity serving as an excuse to revisit it. Daring to be different isn’t a bad thing and should be commended here, as should its ambition. It’s a Welsh language film made for a wide audience, a rarity in the industry, which could just pave the way for more Welsh films of its kind. For that alone, I can forgive whatever flaws The Passing may have.
It may not be for everybody, and it may leave you scratching your head afterwards, but The Passing is nevertheless worth seeking out when it’s released on April 8th.
words JOE RICHARDS