‘Passing’ Film Review: Rebecca Hall’s Stunning Directorial Debut Provocatively Explores Race
Sundance 2021: Tessa Thompson and Ruth Negga play characters who can pass for white, and the drama digs into the roots of their masqueradeCarlos Aguilar | January 30, 2021 @ 8:50 PM Last Updated: January 30, 2021 @ 9:33 PM
Edu Grau/Sundance Institute
Face half-covered with a beautiful hat, Irene Redfield (Tessa Thompson), a biracial woman, wanders into establishments that would be off-limits to her if she couldn’t pass as white. On one of those undercover escapades, she runs into a friend from her youth, Clare (Ruth Negga), now a blonde living full time as a white wife. The ramifications of their camouflage lie at the center of “Passing,” Rebecca Hall’s impressively refined and superbly acted directorial debut, which she adapted from Nella Larsen’s novel set in 1920s Harlem.
Mesmerising: Ruth Negga and Tessa Thompson in Passing
Credit: Eduard Grau/Courtesy of Sundance Institute
Dir: Rebecca Hall; Cast: Tessa Thompson, Ruth Negga, André Holland, Bill Camp, Alexander Skarsgård, Ashley Ware Jenkins, Antoinette Crowe-Legacy
To describe Passing as a black-and-white film is to wrestle with the inadequacy of that very term. Based on Nella Larsen’s 1929 novella, Rebecca Hall’s exhilarating debut as a writer-director (which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival last night) is about a reunion between two black women during the Jazz Age. One of them has been passing as white, even fooling her racist white husband; the other is married with two boys and living in a well-to-do Harlem neighbourhood. These childhood friends sit on either side of a social divide that might as well be the Grand Canyon – opposites by choice, and yet sisters in their ethnicity and upbringing.
Three very different films premiered on Saturday, the biggest day for the 2021 Sundance Film Festival. Set in different time periods in different parts of the world, these movies are a snapshot of the diversity of stories being told virtually out of Park City.
The best of the three is
“Passing,” Rebecca Hall’s adaptation of the 1929 Harlem Renaissance novel of the same name by Nella Larsen. The acclaimed actress proves to be an ambitious filmmaker, tackling a challenging story of race, sexuality, class, and culture in the 1920s. She also proves to be a deft director of performance, bringing out the best of her notable cast, particularly her incredibly talented leads. There are aspects of “Passing” that feel a bit too preciously rendered it’s very refined in terms of craft, almost to a fault but this is a drama that will have people talking when it’s released. It’s a conversation piece in every way, and those are always the films that matter most.
Tessa Thompson and Ruth Negga make for a riveting pair in Passing Mashable 1/31/2021
It takes a moment for
Passing to reveal itself. At first, the screen is just a white blur, and only gradually do shapes and sound begin to emerge: shoes, voices, a street. Eventually, we re able to place ourselves in 1920s New York, and pinpoint Irene (Tessa Thompson) as our protagonist.
But the disorientation of those first moments never quite fades. Though it s based on a 1929 novella by Nella Larsen, and shot in the elegant black-and-white and boxy 4:3 aspect ratio of classic Hollywood,
Passing feels thoroughly modern in its exploration of the blurred lines demarcating race, class, gender, and sexuality. Its old-fashioned aesthetic becomes another a way of pointing out that though things have changed since then, they haven t changed as much as we might want to believe.