Into the Pass

Twenty-one-year-old Remy is pulling double shifts at a restaurant where the room for error is very little. The restaurant’s reputation precedes it despite, and perhaps because, it is a place that only serves soup.

The night on which the film opens is an especially crucial one because a food critic is visiting, ensuring that the pressure to perform without any hiccups is mounting on the protagonist. The absence of another employee, Alex, for an entire week, has done little to help matters. Another distinct thing about this particular restaurant is the amount of activity that pivots around a dumbwaiter, sometimes leaving Remy confused with the appearance of strange notes in the form of deliveries.

The world the film conjures is marked by its cold, impersonal visuals, and set design, surgical and indifferent in the gravity they invoke. Tension is further built within what is left unsaid, as all of Remy’s questions about what strikes him as strange are left unasked or unanswered. Though the screenplay and the subsequent storytelling are not entirely seamless, it is easy to overlook the few raw edges in the face of the world-building that the film offers. It also leaves the door open for more such storytelling which should definitely be interacted with and shared with viewers in the future.