Tessa Thompson and Ruth Negga play Black women in 1920s New York, navigating the color line from opposite sides in Rebecca Hall s adaptation of the Harlem Renaissance novel.
Exquisite performances from Tessa Thompson and Ruth Negga provide the pulsing, emotionally heightened center to
Passing, Rebecca Hall s assured move behind the camera, adapted with great sensitivity from the 1929 novel by Harlem Renaissance author Nella Larsen. We re all of us passing for something or other, aren t we? muses Thompson s melancholy character Irene Redfield. This is a dreamily atmospheric evocation of 1920s New York, its bursts of Jazz Age exuberance offset by the contained threat of people being unmasked. It tells an intimate story of two women on either side of the color line while undertaking an intersectional exploration of identity in relation to race, gender, class and sexuality.
An adaptation of Harlem Renaissance writer Nella Larsen's 1929 book, writer-director Rebecca Hall's debut feature Passing is a pretty looking film that often mimes at deeper conversations about race, class, and sexuality but ultimately eludes saying anything interesting. And through it all, I wished the two leads could overcome their gay yearning for just once and KISS. Shot in what Sundance refers to as a "creamy" (!!!!) black and white film, Passing begins on a.
Premiere: Jan. 30th 4:00 p.m.
The art of black-and-white photography has endured long after the creation of color photos, because there are certain qualities that it possesses, some tangible and some intangible. In her directorial debut,
Passing, Rebecca Hall
(Vicky Christina Barcelona, The Town) utilizes both kinds to astounding, gorgeous effect, and adds “metaphorical” to the list.
An adaptation of
Passing follows Irene Redfield (
Tessa Thompson,
Creed, Sylvie’s Love), a refined, upper-class 1920s woman who finds breezy refuge from a hot summer day in the grand tearoom of New York City’s
Drayton Hotel. Across the room, she spots a blond woman staring her down. Irene wants to steal away, but before she can, Clare Kendry (
G. Allen Johnson January 27, 2021Updated: January 28, 2021, 6:21 pm
Anne Lai, a former Sundance Institute executive, became the executive director of SFFilm on March 11. Photo: Pamela Gentile, SFFilm
Last year, Anne Lai left Utah’s Sundance Institute and moved to the Bay Area to lead SFFilm. She never dreamed that when the Sundance Film Festival returned on Thursday, Jan. 28, it would be screening films near her new home in San Mateo and not in its base in Park City, Utah.
That’s because the first major film festival of 2021 is mostly virtual, with select in-person events happening around the country, including drive-in screenings at Fort Mason Flix on the San Francisco waterfront.