Sundance review: 'Passing' is a beautifully realized story of race, classically told and passionately modern
‘Passing’
★★★1/2
Appearing in the U.S. Dramatic competition of the 2021 Sundance Film Festival. Can be streamed through the festival digital portal on Monday, February 1. Running time: 98 minutes.
——
Actor Rebecca Hall’s directing debut “Passing” is a delicate but powerful masterpiece of form and performance, telling a decades-old story of race and discrimination that’s as fresh as today’s news.
Based on Harlem Renaissance author Nella Larsen’s 1929 novel, which Hall’s screenplay adapts with painstaking care, the story begins when Irene Redfield (Tessa Thompson), a Harlem woman who can but seldom does pass for white, has a chance encounter with a former acquaintance, Claire Kendry (Ruth Negga). Claire is also light-skinned Black, but is living as a white woman, married to a prosperous businessman, John (Alexander Skarsgård), who is an unabashed bigot.
Claire becomes a regular visitor to Irene’s home in Harlem, which she shares with her doctor husband, Bryan (André Holland), and their two boys, who are all darker skinned than Irene. Claire, her flask always filled (this is the age of Prohibition, after all), also insinuates herself into Irene’s social circle; Irene organizes fund-raising dances for the Negro Welfare League, and is good friends with a white author, Hugh Wentworth (Bill Camp), who is sympathetic to the cause of civil rights — though not above commenting on Claire’s free-wheeling behavior.
Claire’s presence, and absence, also stirs up disagreements in the Redfield marriage — particularly as Bryan presses Irene to leave America for some place with less overt discrimination.
Hall and cinematographer Edu Grau filmed “Passing” in black and white, in a strict 4-by-3 screen ratio, which matches the 1920s setting — the era of Al Jolson doing blackface, mind you — and concentrates the eye on the expressive, radiant faces of Thompson and Negga. The period look, realized by production designer Nora Mendis and costume designer Marci Rodgers and their teams, is exquisite.
Hall puts much care and detail into every shot, but her biggest coup is pairing Thompson and Negga, who embody the two sides of the racial divide and the psychological push-and-pull that both bonds and separates the characters. These talented women — the two in front of the camera, and the one behind it — make “Passing” a sparkling gem with some surprisingly sharp edges.