Deborah Ross

Exquisite to look at, strangely tense and wholly riveting: Netflix’s Passing reviewed

You won’t be able to take your eyes off Tessa Thompson or Ruth Negga

Tessa Thompson (Irene) and Ruth Negga (Clare) are both excellent in Passing

Passing is Rebecca Hall’s adaptation of the Nella Larsen novella (1929) about two biracial women, one of whom chooses to pass for white, and one who does not, and the effect they have on each other, and it’s superbly done. It’s tightly made, exquisite to look at, strangely tense, wholly riveting and it’s also, let’s be honest, just the right length for a film (90 minutes).

Hall — who wrote the screenplay and directs, and is otherwise an actress — is the daughter of theatre director Peter Hall and opera singer Maria Ewing and you could say she has skin in the game. When she was growing up, she has said, she would sometimes look at her mother and wonder: are you a black woman? But nothing was ever said so she said nothing, only later discovering that her mother’s father had been biracial and brought up all his children as white. (‘Passing’ will mean different things to different people and as a Jew I sort of experience it in the form of people saying: ‘I can’t see it’, always intended as a compliment. You could pass!)

It relies on both lead actors conveying the interior lives of their characters and both succeed remarkably

It’s a fascinating subject, explored here via the two women, Irene (Tessa Thompson, excellent) and Clare (Ruth Negga, excellent). They are childhood friends who lost touch but happen to bump into each other in New York’s whites-only Drayton Hotel. It’s rare for Irene to wish to pass but not Clare, whose rich, chillingly racist white husband (Alexander Skarsgard) has no idea she is anything but white. Clare tells Irene they have a daughter who can also pass but she never dared have another child as throughout her pregnancy she feared her baby would be ‘too dark’. ‘My boys are dark,’ says Irene stiffly.

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