Passing

A film set in 1920s New York. Irene lives in Harlem. A doctor husband, two sons and an orderly life. One summer day she goes into a hotel downtown. It is a place for white people and she can go in; her skin is light enough. Someone she knows is at a table. Clare is a childhood friend. Clare had disappeared years ago. She now lives as a white woman. Her husband is rich, racist, and does not know who his wife is. From there the film is a story of approach. Clare starts coming to Harlem. She spends time in Irene's house. She comes to parties, plays with the children and talks to her husband. Irene is unsettled. She does not say why even to herself. What the narrative is interested in is not identity but jealousy: its real tension comes from Irene beginning to see her own life through Clare's eyes and finding something missing there. The narrative is confined to Irene's view. We never learn what Clare thinks. Her husband Brian wants to leave the country. He does not want to live in America and Irene refuses. That argument recurs inside the narrative and is never resolved. The ending is left unsettled. The narrative does not say what happened and the choice is left to the viewer. The images are black and white and squared off. The framing is deliberately tight; the characters constantly look pressed inside a frame. The source is Nella Larsen's 1929 novel. This is Rebecca Hall's first film as a director, and she knows the subject from her own family: her maternal grandfather was a Black American who lived as white. Tessa Thompson, Ruth Negga, André Holland and Alexander Skarsgård are in the cast. Who it is for: anyone who likes quiet dramas built on a gaze and adaptations from literature. Who it is not for: anyone expecting a clear answer; the narrative states nothing openly and its final scene is contested.