The Passing

Iwan and Sara (Dyfan Dwyfor and Annes Elwy) are rescued from a river, having driven their car into it. Stanley (Mark Lewis Jones), their rescuer, lives a rugged, solitary life in the Welsh mountains. He takes the couple back to his farmhouse to recuperate. Over time, stories are told and secrets are revealed, leading to a final, unsettling disclosure.

THE PASSING is a somber film that appears to make little sense until the denouement. Everything becomes clear at that point. This movie draws from a long tradition in supernatural tales. To say more would ruin it. A second viewing is recommended in order to see what wasn't so obvious the first time...

I tend to go down these cultural rabbit holes. After watching Severn Screen's second season of the excellent Hidden (Craith, in Welsh), I was drawn to this feature length 'horror' written a few years earlier by Ed Talfan, producer of Hinterland and Hidden, and a particularly gruesome historical horror film The Apostle from 2018.

The trailer suggested it was going to be a horror film, I think. The premise being that it starts with a lonely man tending to a run down farm, building a well. He's played by Mark Lewis Jones, a Welsh actor of some stature, who brought real presence recently to both his part as Steve Baldini in Keeping Faith and as Prince Charles' Welsh language tutor, Edward Millward in The Crown. There is a sense of foreboding and a tragic, hidden menace, but as the story goes on you're sure the gentle giant Lewis Jones' Stanley is just that, but that the young man and the woman he's pulled from a crashed car have something they're running from.

All of the spoken dialogue is in Welsh, but it's also sparse and packed full of non-verbal tension, with just the three actors, the couple played by Annes Elwy from Hidden, and Dyfan Dwyfor who stars in S4C's Bang, which is now on my list. Yet for all of the uncertain undercurrents of tragedy and loss, The Passing is a remarkably tender and reflective story. There are a couple of dark twists that I can't even begin to hint at, but by the end of it (and I'd worked it out), you realise it's a work of quiet allegorical genius. Like many of the other projects that Talfan and his cohort are creating, it's a body of work that not only tells the stories of the people of Wales, that lets the landscape play an important central part, but does so in knowing and critical solidarity. It's far more ambitious in that regard than just Scandi Noir, Welsh style, unless of course I'm missing something cultural there too.

Should I pay any attention to reviews on IMDb? I was surprised it wasn't higher rated, but those who just didn't get it seemed to really hate it. Yes, there are things that happen that are improbable, impossible, inexplicable. That's the point. All I'll say is this: Cofiwch Drywern. So if you know what that means, fine, if you don't, that's not fine and you probably ought to read more.

The opening scene sets the tone for the entire film, i.e. dark, brooding, virtually no dialog and painfully slow moving. The positive reviews and award nominations convinced me this would be worth watching, however, I found the actions of the characters to be implausible throughout the film making it difficult for me to become immersed in the story.

Still, the cinematography was somewhat captivating, so I hung in there for the big reveal at the end, but once again was disappointed to find nothing particularly clever about the troubling past of the three characters as it was gradually revealed to the audience. I suppose, learning the back story of each character will be interesting for some viewers, but anything less than 5 stars from my perspective suggests my time could have been spent watching something more worthwhile.

When the real premise of a movie is hidden until the very last scene, someone's done a good job because at that very last scene, you find yourself rethinking everything you thought you already knew from prior scenes.

Ultimately, this movie is about second chances, and how second chances are earned by relatively flawed good character, or blown by bad character. A nice literary fiction - character development story.

The cinematography isn't great, but the story makes up for it.

Cinematography was alright but the rest was a bigger waste of time than threasa mays primistoral time so far. DO NOT RECOMMEND