'Passing' Review: Rebecca Hall's Subtle, Provocative Directorial Debut
'Passing' Review: Rebecca Hall's Subtle, Provocative Directorial Debut
A superbly performed study of racialized longing and feminine dissatisfaction in 1920s New York, lit by searing intelligence and compassion.
Jessica Kiang, provided by
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Director: Rebecca Hall
With: Tessa Thompson, Ruth Negga, André Holland, Alexander Skarsgård, Bill Camp, Gbenga Akinnagbe, Antoinette Crowe-Legacy, Ashley Ware Jenkins.
Running time: Running time: 98 MIN.
Eduard Grau
It starts in sweltering heat; it ends in freezing weather. And in between, as the temperature gradually drops, Rebecca Hall’s “Passing,” based on Nella Larsen’s 1929 novel, calmly brings the diffuse racial landscape of prohibition-era New York City into crystalline, gorgeously shot focus. This radically intimate exploration of the desperately fraught concept of “passing” — being Black but pretending to be white — ought to be too ambitious for a first-time filmmaker, but Hall’s touch is unerring, deceptively delicate, quiet and immaculate, like that final fall of snow.