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“Passing,” Reviewed: Rebecca Hall’s Anguished Vision of Black Identity

Rebecca Hall’s directorial début, “Passing,” based on Nella Larsen’s 1929 novel of the same name, is one of the rare book adaptations that brings a literary style to the screen. The film’s sense of style is more than mere ornament; it embodies the confrontation with circumstances—practical, emotional, historical—at the heart of the story. “Passing” (coming to Netflix on Wednesday) is a period piece, set in Harlem during Prohibition, just before the Depression. The movie achieves an ample, resonant reconstruction of that era, but it doesn’t feature colossal sets or give the sense that entire neighborhoods were transformed for the purpose of shooting. Instead, Hall uses sharply defined locations imaginatively and conjures the time through her original way with light, texture, and gesture, all redolent of a storied yet troubled past. The result is an emotional immediacy that’s all the sharper for its subtlety, all the more intense for its contemplative refinement, and that, above all, gives apt expression to the film’s mighty and agonized subject.

The movie stars Tessa Thompson as Irene Redfield, a woman of about thirty who lives in a Harlem town house with her husband—Brian (André Holland), a doctor—and their two sons, one a child and the other on the cusp of puberty. She’s an activist who works as a volunteer for a (fictitious) charitable organization called the Negro League while also running the household. A light-skinned Black woman, she’s taken for white by white people in the course of her errands outside Harlem on a hot summer day. At a hotel café, Irene encounters Clare Bellew (Ruth Negga), a friend from high school whom she hasn’t seen in a dozen years. Clare, too, has light skin—but, unlike Irene, she intentionally passes for white. She’s married to a wealthy white banker named John (Alexander Skarsgård) and lives her entire life amid white society. Clare’s reunion with Irene (whom she calls Reenie) awakens a long-suppressed desire to exist among Black people, to affirm her own identity without shame or fear. Clare imposes herself on the Redfield household, befriends Brian and the boys, takes part in Negro League social events run by Irene—and, in doing so, knowingly confronts the grave risk that John will find out that she’s Black.

The daily anguish that passing causes Clare is revealed during the women’s initial reunion. In Clare’s hotel room (she and John are on an extended visit from their home in Chicago), John comes in and—taking Irene for white, too—makes racist remarks that include the N-word. He calls Clare by a horrific nickname, based on the color of her skin (he takes it for something like olive), which Clare is obligated to laugh at daily. Irene doesn’t challenge the racist epithets, but she does ask John his opinion of Negroes. He responds that he hates them but that Clare hates them even more and refuses even to hire Black maids (unbeknownst to him, of course, not from hatred but from fear). The tension that Clare endures suffuses the film like a stifled scream. When the two women discuss their home lives, Clare says that she and John have only one child, a daughter, and that she refuses to have any more—because her pregnancy was a time of harrowing anxiety lest the baby turn out to be dark-skinned.

The hatred in the air, the ambient racism—spoken and unspoken, acted upon or merely built into the ordinary habits of society—is the basic framework for Hall’s movie. It’s a matter of marital discord between Irene and Brian, who wants the family to emigrate from the United States to Europe in order to avoid American bigotry. Despite her involvement with the Negro League, a civic organization that apparently promotes the interests of Black people, Irene is trying to raise her sons without reference to the terrors that Blacks face in American society—she tries to prevent Brian from telling them about lynchings. (He persists nonetheless and tells them about the murder of John Carter , in Little Rock, Arkansas.) When one of their sons is called the N-word, the experience is as much of a surprise to him as it is a shock.

Clare’s seemingly passive weathering of such hatred prompts Irene to try to keep her at a distance. (Irene later admits to having overlooked the relentless and furious self-control that such a constant performance costs Clare.) Yet once Clare takes the step of self-liberation—at least part time, out of John’s sight—she can’t and won’t stop, and Irene is powerless to get in the way of what she knows to be a disaster in the making. Hall’s greatest directorial inspiration is her portrayal of Irene, who, for all her bustling activity, is passive in her own way—and who, for all her relentless observation, is caught in tangles of passion. In the movie as in the novel, Irene is the story’s main character, its central consciousness, even if it’s Clare whose actions give rise to the central drama. Hall follows Irene throughout, and much of what Hall shows Irene doing is watching, looking, gazing, staring, pondering. The very heart of the movie “Passing” is in Thompson’s eyes, and, as Thompson brings a vast expressive range and emotional energy to her gaze, Hall works a wide variety of changes on the theme. She films Thompson in varied, vigorous, and probing closeups. She offers point-of-view shots in which other characters stare, seemingly into the camera, at Irene. She fills the movie with mirrors and finds Irene unable to escape her own gaze in them, let alone the gazes of others as they turn up alongside her in the reflections. Above all, Hall shows Irene watching with mounting anguish as events in which she is inextricably involved speed toward their inevitable conclusion—and as she is bumped outside herself, watching her own inability to take action on behalf of her friend.

“Passing” is a drama of vision and of inner vision, of appearances and images and self-images, and Hall’s spare and reserved cinematic style serves to emphasize the inward aspect of the action, its crises of consciousness. Her finely textured, tensely poised compositions, filmed in black-and-white, render the drama of desperate desires and unspoken emotions in high and fervent relief. In sharply detailed yet allusive abstractions, Hall turns the Harlem of the nineteen-twenties into a stage of grand philosophical tragedy. Irene’s own reflections, both mental and visual, are joined to quietly imposing depictions of city life, including broodingly expressive views of the staccato rhythms of brownstone architecture and a series of tracking shots (on the Harlem street leading Irene and other characters to the Redfields’ town house) that recur onscreen like a musical motif. There’s also a literal musical motif, piano music composed and performed by Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou, that Hall uses to accompany yet another striking, recurring visual figure: sunlight seen through the leaves of trees on the Redfields’ street, a sort of cinematic harmony of culture and nature, of aesthetics and experience, that stands throughout as an artistic and political ideal.

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As I watched writer/director Rebecca Hall ’s adaption of Nella Larsen ’s 1929 novella, Passing , I couldn’t stop thinking about the story in “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” where “a colored man” named Eliza Cottor sold his soul to the Devil. The sale made him impervious to consequence, not just for big crimes like committing a murder, but also for small, self-assured gestures that would have certainly gotten his “uppity” ass lynched. August Wilson ’s metaphorical tangent struck me as ironic because, as I wrote in my review, “it seems the only way for a Black man to enjoy the same freedom as his White counterpart in the 1920s is to broker a deal with Beelzebub.” But I understood why Eliza Cottor made that arrangement. He surrendered his soul, but not his identity. In the former scenario, Hell awaits you when you die; in the latter scenario, chosen by this film’s free spirited Clare ( Ruth Negga ), Hell can be visited by the living.

Clare is a Black woman passing for White. She’s convincing enough to fool a lot of people, including John ( Alexander Skarsgård ), her vile, racist husband. Before we meet Clare, we follow her old high school classmate, Irene ( Tessa Thompson ) who, on this particular day, has decided to try her hand at fooling the masses. She nervously enters a White dining establishment and takes a seat. Hall’s camera, emboldened by Eduard Grau ’s stunning black-and-white cinematography, casts a lengthy gaze at Irene’s face under the hat she’s pulled down low enough to arouse suspicion. This beautiful close-up immediately sent my brain to its Blackest depths. “Gurl, there’s no way you’re fooling anybody!” I thought. “Not with  that  nose and mouth!” I started to think about Billy Wilder ’s choice to shoot “ Some Like It Hot ” in black and white so as to mute the fact that Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis are some very unconvincing women.

My temporary disbelief was suspended by a major jolt of reality: Unlike the waiters and patrons surrounding Irene,  I know what to look for  when it comes to recognizing my own people. Some of these “how to notice your Negro” tips I’ve read by Jim Crow-loving idiots weren’t even close to accurate. So I was gripped by suspense during this scene. Hall’s camera takes Irene’s point of view, darting around and quickly noticing Clare. Then the viewfinder rests on her for an uncomfortable amount of time. We sense a possible familiarity between the two, but the uncertainty of the moment hangs in the air.

Clare initiates their meeting, and the two share old memories and their current secret pastime. She’s in New York City as her husband conducts business. Clare peppers the conversation with news and gossip from their hometown. During the chat, Irene mentions her husband, Brian (a superbly understated André Holland ) and the two sons she shares a house with in Harlem. Going one better than a verbal description, John is formally introduced when he interrupts the two friends’ reunion. Thinking Irene is White, and someone who agrees with his worldview, John drops his guard the way people like him always do when they think they’re amongst friends.

What follows is one of Thompson’s best scenes in the film. The horrific dialogue on the surface may distract from what she’s doing, so focus on how swiftly she manages to keep herself in check as her body language almost betrays her. John mentions how much he hates Black people, which we expect. Then he points out that Clare also hates them, but has “been getting darker and darker every year we’ve been together.” This worrisome feature earns her the nickname “Nig,” which John sees as both a term of mockery and endearment. The second syllable of her nickname is implied, and you know damn well it’s with a hard R. Thompson and Negga play this scene as a duet of dueling but equally subtle reactions. For a moment, it appears Irene may out Clare to her boorish man, and the tension Hall and her actors generate is as white-knuckle as any action chase scene.

Though Irene wants nothing to do with Clare after this, she’s cordial when Clare shows up at her doorstep unannounced. Their friendship is rekindled, partially out of curiosity and perhaps more than a bit out of guilt. Without sacrificing her Blackness, Irene lives a rather bougie life in her brownstone. But she’s practically a prude compared to the flapper-like exuberance Clare reveals once she’s able to sneak back to the cookout. During these social gatherings for the Negro Welfare League, Clare is a constant source of fascination, from the Black men who fawn over her light-skinned beauty to a snooty White writer, Hugh ( Bill Camp ), who’s supposed to be an ally but comes off as someone observing Black folks as if he were watching a National Geographic special. When Hugh asks why Clare would go to a dance in Harlem after she’s technically “escaped” her Black existence, Irene responds that she’s there “for the same reason you are. To see Negroes.”

“To see Negroes.” It’s a good line, a well-observed comeback that has sharper teeth than its humorous delivery implies. One is inclined to meditate on how much Clare longs to be amongst her people again, and how her temporary happiness throws Irene’s disposition off-kilter. Things get worse when it appears Brian may have more than a friendly interest in this enigma who wants to have her Black and Whiteness too. And Clare is an enigma, which was my initial problem with “Passing.” As good as Negga is, she’s mostly left to our own devices of interpretation. This bothered me until I realized that Irene is our stand-in. We know as much as she does. As she tries to figure Clare out, and reconcile her own feelings, we’re doing the same.

Hall, Grau, editor Sabine Hoffman , and composer Devonté Hynes do an excellent job of casting a hypnotic spell on the audience. This is a deliberately paced film with enveloping moods that feel like symphony movements. There’s heavy material here, but “Passing” doesn’t belabor its points. When Brian rightfully tries to warn his sons about the racist trouble they’ll face in the world, Irene argues that they should have some innocence in their youth. We understand both arguments even though we know one of them is very, very naïve. The entire film exists in this perpetual state of a deceptively gentle push and pull. It’s a masterful balance of tone. And even though we anticipate the ending, it comes with a surprising amount of empathy and sadness, two things that were always subtly present during the runtime.

“Passing” put me in a very thoughtful mode of allusion and pattern-gathering. On a parallel track, my mind went to other features, from Douglas Sirk ’s “Imitation of Life,” my third favorite movie of all time, to “Watermelon Man,” which is a directly opposite story. The one connection that, like “Ma Rainey,” I couldn’t shake was, of all things, Spike Lee’s “ BlacKkKlansman .” Adam Driver ’s character has to pass for a White character played by a very Black John David Washington , and in doing so, he navigates an anti-Semitic and hateful world that would kill him if his Jewishness were revealed. He has it a lot easier than Clare does here, but Lee allows us to navigate his torment. I imagined a similar agony befell Clare in those moments when we don’t see her, when she’s alone with her demons.

My pensive mood eventually led me to my old church-going days, and Matthew 16:26, which says  “For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?”  That kind of sums things up here, but to be honest, I wonder just how little worry I’d have about my soul if I got what I wanted in this life. I don’t think I could give up who I was, though. Like I said, that would be some kind of living Hell.

In limited theatrical release today before premiering on Netflix on November 10th.

Note: Site Publisher Chaz Ebert is an executive producer on this film. She had no influence over this review. 

Odie Henderson

Odie “Odienator” Henderson has spent over 33 years working in Information Technology. He runs the blogs Big Media Vandalism and Tales of Odienary Madness. Read his answers to our Movie Love Questionnaire  here .

• Tessa Thompson as Irene Redfield
• Ruth Negga as Clare Kendry
• André Holland as Brian Redfield
• Alexander Skarsgård as John
• Bill Camp as Hugh
• Gbenga Akinnagbe as Dave
• Antoinette Crowe-Legacy as Felise
• Devonté Hynes

Cinematographer

• Eduard Grau

Writer (novel)

• Nella Larsen
• Rebecca Hall
• Sabine Hoffman

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‘Passing’ Review: Black Skin, White Masks

Rebecca Hall’s piercing drama stars Tessa Thompson and Ruth Negga as old friends navigating the color line in 1920s New York.

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By Manohla Dargis

Irene Redfield, the restless heart of Rebecca Hall’s piercing drama “Passing,” has a beautiful dream of a life. She also has a handsome husband who’s a doctor, a pair of well-behaved children, an elegant townhouse and a maid to help keep the domestic churn in check. She has good friends and meaningful charity work. Her figure is trim and graceful; her lovely face serene and unlined. Everything is as it should be, or so Irene believes. She doesn’t know that her idyll is as fragile as a soap bubble, and that this glistening, quivering fantasy she has created needs just one touch to vanish.

Set in the 1920s, “Passing” tells what happens to Irene (Tessa Thompson) when a childhood friend, Clare (Ruth Negga), enters that dream, disturbing its peace and threatening its careful illusions. Like Irene, Clare is a light-skinned African American living in Jim Crow America. Unlike Irene, Clare is living as white: “passing.” Orphaned after her father’s death and put into the care of white relatives who treated her like the help, Clare vanished. Years later, she has re-emerged with a wealthy white husband, John (Alexander Skarsgard), who’s oblivious to her history. He also — as he tells the startled Irene as Clare watches — hates Black people, unaware that he’s speaking to one.

Based on Nella Larsen’s brilliant 1929 novel, “Passing” is an anguished story of identity and belonging. Like the book, the movie centers on Irene, a bourgeois wife and mother who can’t grasp why she is so addled by Clare. The two meet again by accident, each having taken refuge from the blistering summer heat in the grand tearoom of a fashionable New York hotel. Irene enters the tearoom with palpable wariness, her gait slowed, head down and face partly obscured by the semitransparent brim of her cloche hat. There are no racially restrictive signs in the hotel; the restrictions are a given . Like Clare, Irene has transgressed. But then she goes home to Harlem.

Irene doesn’t recognize Clare at first, a confusion that reverberates throughout a story that hinges on appearances, racial and otherwise. Irene may be on her guard in the hotel, but the very fact that she enters the tearoom speaks to her self-confidence and to how she has learned to navigate the color line. Because, like Clare, Irene is also passing; unlike Clare, she is only briefly slipping into a masquerade. Irene compartmentalizes and rationalizes her act; she needs to cool down, the tearoom is a breezy refuge, if one she intentionally seeks out rather than merely happens upon. Yet by passing, however fleetingly, she also becomes Clare’s double.

Hall wrote and directed the movie, her feature debut, and has followed Larsen’s lead. The novel is told through Irene’s limited point of view, though it takes time to grasp the subtleties of her blinkered perspective (understanding their implications takes longer). Irene is a sympathetic, attractive, purposely opaque character with a quick mind and tongue, a richness of character that Hall’s filmmaking and Thompson’s performance convey in exacting, illuminating detail. But there’s a stubborn rigidity to Irene’s self-assurance and how she engages her reality, and she is by turns surprised, baffled and angered that other people’s actions and desires don’t always conform to her own.

In sticking close to the novel, Hall has pulled scenes and lines from the book, but she also visually conveys how Irene sees and exists in her world, mapping the coordinates of a life and consciousness through the expressionistic lighting, through the many tonalities of the black-and-white visuals and through the elegant rooms that edge on dollhouse claustrophobia. It all looks so irresistible: Everything and everyone is lovely. There’s an ethereal quality to this picture (Irene’s, Hall’s) and Thompson gives her character a gestural delicacy and a suppleness of movement that at times makes it seem as if Irene is drifting along on a heavenly cloud. Yet, at other times, she seems to be sleepwalking.

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‘Passing’ Review: Tessa Thompson and Ruth Negga Shine in Rebecca Hall’s Elegant, Searing Period Piece

Kate erbland, editorial director.

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Editor’s note: This review was originally published at the 2021   Sundance   Film Festival. Netflix releases the film in select theaters on Wednesday, October 27, with a streaming release to follow.

In the mid-1920s, budding writer Nella Larsen set her eyes on joining the ranks of the rising “New Negro” writers spilling out of the Harlem Renaissance like Rudolph Fisher, Zora Neale Hurston, Langston Hughes, and their leader and mentor Alain Locke. The Chicago native even relocated from New Jersey to Harlem to better place herself — and her husband, trailblazing physicist Elmer Imes — in the heart of the cultural action. While Larsen has not yet enjoyed the full recognition of her contemporaries, she produced two remarkable novels that continue to enthrall readers. The best known of the pair is “ Passing ,” a complex examination of race and sexuality set against the backdrop of the same ’20s-era Harlem that Larsen was so keen to be part of.

The book, like its predecessor “Quicksand,” is run through with details culled from Larsen’s own life, including her experiences as a mixed-race woman in a time of heightened racial division. It’s a calling-card work, and in first-time director Rebecca Hall ‘s capable hands, “Passing” becomes a similarly seminal feature film, as beautiful and bruising and knotty as the novel that inspired it. Like Larsen, Hall hails from a mixed background, and her own experiences with racial presentation and expectation help root a complicated story that resists any and all hammy or heavy-handed twists.

Shot in luminous black-and-white by cinematographer Eduard Grau (a choice that, given the material, might sound gimmicky, and is not), Hall also opted for a boxed-in 4:3 aspect ratio, all the better to heighten the film’s constant tension and the sense that its characters can’t escape the confines of their lives. Hall sanded away some of the book’s more convoluted plot points, setting it almost entirely in Harlem (there is no Chicago flashback here) and doing away with a handful of characters to better focus on its central stars, Irene “Rene” Redfield (Tessa Thompson) and Clare Kendry Bellew (Ruth Negga).

As the film opens, a restrained Irene navigates her way through a sweltering New York City summer day, tucking her face inside her hat all the better to, well, maybe not hide exactly, but at least obscure. She’s so careful that even a pair of white women who accidentally drop a “pickaninny” doll at her feet don’t balk when Irene, a Black woman, returns it to them. The question of whether they don’t pick up on her racial identity or don’t care about it lingers, particularly as Irene continues with her errands with the same measure of concealment. Stopping off at luxe hotel known for its breezy rooftop cafe, Irene is discomfited by the gaze of a white woman sitting just across from her. What, she seems to think, does she see?

Thompson, the rare actress who is just at home in grandiose Marvel properties — her Valkryie rides a goddamned winged horse into battle and makes it look natural — as she is in more restrained period pieces, plays Irene as a natural observer. She looks at everything, and so too does Hall, skimming around the breezy cafe, making note of everyone and, most importantly, what they might be thinking when they look at Irene. No one is looking harder than Clare, however.

Childhood friends who haven’t seen each other in nearly a decade, Irene is shocked to realize that the white woman staring her down isn’t white at all; it’s Clare who’s bi-racial, just like Irene. While different audiences will bring different levels of understanding to “Passing,” Hall doesn’t spoon-feed what transpires between the women, trusting that people will get it long before Clare explains away her current state during their extended visit. Clare has done something that shocks Irene — or does it, really? — to her core: She’s passing as white. She’s married a white man (Alexander Skarsgsard, uncomfortable as the racist and sexist John Bellew), bearing him a child who is even more light-skinned than Clare, and scarcely returning to the Harlem of her youth.

But seeing Irene lights something in Clare, and Negga’s effervescent performance cleverly masks the roiling confusion building inside of her. As happy as Clare says she is with her life, her instant obsession with Irene — and her subsequent insertion into nearly every aspect of her life — hints how desperate she is to share the terrible secret she’s kept for so long. Thompson is all bundled nerves, and while Negga initially steals the spotlight with her bigger, brasher performance, Thompson steadily builds to something searing. Hall made many good choices for her debut — her entire crafts department turned in rich period production elements — but the casting of her leads might be the best of the bunch.

Understandably, Irene can’t shake the interaction, and when a letter arrives from Clare, stuffed with flowery language that makes Irene’s husband Brian (Andre Holland) titter, she’s unable to ignore the effect her old friend has had on her. Much like Larsen’s novel, Hall’s “Passing” simmers with a homoerotic subtext that eventually gives way to jealousy and ruin. Both Clare and Irene are bi-racial, and each has made a definitive choice as to which portion of their racial makeup defines them and the world they choose to live in — is it possible something similar is happening with their sexual identities? Can we just choose who we are? And what happens to the pieces of us we try to reject?

Not one to be rebuffed, Clare — who Negga plays as irrepressible in every sense of the word — shows up at the Redfields’ Harlem brownstone and essentially pleads to be let into their lives. Spending time in Harlem, even if most people think she’s white, frees Clare to enjoy the things she’s so long shut out of her life, even as the steady Irene reminds her of the danger in her possible exposure. Oh, but Clare is so hard to resist. Irene’s husband and sweet sons also fall, in varying ways, under Clare’s sway, and the weaving of Clare and Irene’s lives seems wholly, uneasily complete.

“Passing” asks who is allowed in certain spaces (and who is the gatekeeper of those spaces), and what happens when people are ejected from them, either by their own free will or an outside force. How do you get back inside? Can you, really? And what’s the price for such infractions? As Clare’s secret frays Irene’s nerves and her very sense of self, “Passing” and Hall reject pat answers. Larsen’s novel walked a similarly tough tonal line, amping the drama without giving a sense of relief. Even when a definitive conclusion comes, the tension and questions don’t stop. How can they? Larsen never set out to deliver answers; just rich, searching stories rounded in real experience — precisely what Hall has translated to the big screen for her formidable first outing.

“Passing” premiered at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival in the U.S. Dramatic Competition section. 

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While Passing 's delicate approach has a dampening effect on its story, debuting director Rebecca Hall makes the most of an impressive cast -- and handles thorny themes with impressive dexterity.

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Passing Review

Rebecca hall’s directorial debut hits its mark..

Passing is in theaters for a limited release on Oct. 27 with digital streaming on Netflix Nov. 10, 2021.

Based on Nella Larsen’s 1929 novel of the same name, Passing is a period piece objectively about race that transcends that binary distinction to explore the lengths people go to secure “happiness” at all costs. It’s quite the assured directorial and screenwriting debut from Rebecca Hall, who uses the narrative construct of the novel — two mixed race friends unexpectedly reconnecting in adulthood — to quietly expose the sacrifices women make in terms of their values, morals, hearts, and minds for what society deems acceptable.

Tessa Thompson and Ruth Negga play the two women at the heart of the story, friends from rural Georgia that grow up, lose touch, and then accidentally reconnect in the fancy tea room of The Drayton Hotel in New York City. Their interactions and childhood remembrances make it clear early on that both women have white and Black parents, but Negga’s Clare Bellew has the lighter complexion, which allows her to easily “pass” for white to her unabashedly wealthy, racist husband, John (Alexander Skarsgård). While Thompson’s "Reenie" Redfield uses a well-appointed hat and some specific clothing to lean into her lighter skin for the same assumption on this particular day, she stridently exists as a Black woman in her Harlem community.

Netflix Spotlight: November 2021

Expecting their stories to unfold entirely around their racial categorization choices, Hall wisely expands the boundaries of self-definition in the film to extend outwards exponentially as the women’s renewed friendship begins to unravel the carefully constructed lives they’ve both worked so hard to attain. While both exist in upper-middle class lives, the movie focuses on the perspective of Reenie’s life as the wife of a respected Black doctor, Brian (André Holland), and the mother of two growing boys. It’s in their home and world that Clare thrusts herself into, and begins to flourish within, because she doesn’t have to sustain a constant ruse.

And this is where Passing is at its most fascinating. While there’s a disquieting pall of emotional withholding that permeates the whole piece because of how much each woman is holding back in their everyday existences, it’s in their reignited friendship that their true selves bloom again. Their shared secret is the great unifier for them; a place to both share and connect without fear of judgment and they practically hum with organic chemistry that insinuates the sensual from both sides. In their quiet moments with one another, dispensed with purpose and precision throughout the film, both actresses find their moments of devastating honesty with one another, creating scenes that simmer with what’s said and unsaid.

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Clare is far freer with her confessions to Reenie, but she’s stingy with the details of her day-to-day life, which keeps her a beautiful mystery in the story. Reenie’s faults and flaws are more exposed in the emotional distance she keeps from her husband and children, how she treats her Black housekeeper, and in her relentless pursuit of a “perfect” existence at any cost. The more time we see them exist in one another’s orbits, the more their life goals seem to blur, and their morally grey areas blend.

The emotional lives of both women are brilliantly framed by Hall and her cinematographer, Eduard Grau, utilizing a uniquely intimate aspect ratio that keeps the story small and contained. And the use of monochromatic lighting is almost magical in the way it plays with both women’s skin tones to sometimes emphasize their divisions, and at other times almost negate our perception of their ethnicity. In doing that, the film moves beyond just the binary exploration of race and delves into the rest of their complicated issues about masked sexuality, greed, control, and depression. All of it steadily builds towards a climax that is both bravely enigmatic and profoundly impactful in revealing their shared capacity for ruthless self-preservation in a world that wants to define them by just one thing.

Passing is a thoughtful and visually gorgeous rumination on how we frame ourselves to the world. Rebecca Hall comes out of the gate in her directorial debut possessing an assured point of view, using monochrome and a 4:3 aspect ratio to not only capture the time but the intimacy of the story. Meanwhile, Tessa Thompson and Ruth Negga achieve flawless parity in their performances playing two women that are seemingly opposites, but have more in common than either truly comprehends. It’s both quiet and impactful, and all beautifully realized.

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Culture | Film

Passing review: Rebecca Hall’s debut feature is intensely beautiful

This writing/directing debut from actress Rebecca Hall is based on the wonderful and still-shocking 1929 novel by bi-racial US author, Nella Larsen. Shot in black and white – in a ratio (4:3) that wafts us straight into the past – the film’s loveliness cuts like a knife. The two main characters, former schoolfriends Irene and Clare (Tessa Thompson and Ruth Negga; both mesmerising), are flapper-era yummy mummies. They’re welcomed in elegant New York venues, but only because the staff and clientele take the women’s light skin at face value. Equally in the dark is Clare’s Caucasian husband ( Alexander Skarsgard ). He calls her “N*g”, but that’s his idea of a little joke. What will he do when he finds out his wife isn’t “white as a lily”?

Hall clearly wants her movie to be more than a passing fancy and, in terms of cinematography and performances, it’s truly extraordinary. Dark-haired, progressive Irene, and blonde, apolitical Clare bump into each other in a sun-dappled hotel restaurant and their reunion undulates with thrilling ambiguity. Later, an ingenious tracking shot makes us feel the full weight of the dark and heavy furniture in Irene’s brownstone house. Hall and her director of photography, Eduard Grau, are poets, pure and simple.

The script is also impressive, though it loses focus towards the end. In Larsen’s book, the big revelation about insouciant Irene is that she’s conservative with a small c. This woman may be Black, smart, independent and savvy, but she’s also obsessed with respectability and will do anything to hang on to her doctor husband. The film’s Irene is a more tremulous creature, helplessly attracted to Clare and prone to fainting and taking day-time naps. By foregrounding Irene’s confusion, Hall drains the plot of momentum. Increasingly, we can’t tell what this desperate housewife wants and, as a result, seeing everything from Irene’s point of view becomes a bit of a chore. The bold and reckless Clare seems so much more interesting. If only we had access to her thoughts.

Nothing, however, can dilute the intensity of the basic set-up and the male characters – including Irene’s witty but frustrated husband, Brian (Andre Holland), and Irene’s smug male best friend, Hugh (Bill Camp) – prove satisfyingly knotty. What all these figures have in common is the desire for a quick-fix escape and when they discuss the lure of the exotic, and what it means to go slumming, Passing feels ridiculously pertinent to our times.

Hall’s first film suggests systemic racism makes imposters of us all. It comes tantalisingly close to being a classic and I can’t wait to see what Hall – who’s still only 39 - does next.

In select cinemas now and on Netflix from November 10. 98mins, cert 12A

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