The Pass (2016), based on a stage play of the same name, follows the relationship between two English footballers, Jason and Ade, over the course of a decade.
The film opens with the two young men, 19 years old, in a hotel room in Romania the night before their first professional match after ten years in the English football academy system. The roughhousing, mocking, macho posturing that one might expect from young athletes takes a turn when one of them kisses the other. That single act affects both their careers and lives.
We revisit them two more times, in other hotel rooms, and see how they’ve navigated the world of professional sports and how the need to be seen as masculine at all costs has affected them personally. Taking place mostly in hotel rooms, the movie has a claustrophobic feeling that reflects the effect of living in the closet.
The film stars Russell Tovey as Jason, reprising his role in the stage play, and Arinze Kene as Ade.
Tovey has been openly gay throughout his career, and has played both gay and straight roles. He has always struck me as someone who, if he weren’t famous, would have to come out repeatedly to an endless stream of disappointed aunts and grandmothers trying to fix him up.
In 2015, after appearing in the play, and around the time he was filming the movie, he made some very dopey comments to the press about his own masculine presentation. He stated that his schooling had forced him to toughen up, that he hadn’t been allowed to “prance around and sing in the street” and thanked his father for not allowing him to go down that path. Oof.
He later apologized for the remarks, and I hope he bought his publicist something expensive.
The movie was well received by both critics and audiences. Definitely worth a watch.
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