Passing
The actress Rebecca Hall’s remarkable debut as a writer-director is an adaptation of Nella Larsen’s 1929 novel about a black woman in New York who “passes” for white. It opens with Irene, a doctor’s wife and taciturn charity worker (Tessa Thompson, perfectly brittle), encountering her old school friend Clare (Ruth Negga, astoundingly strong), who is flighty, gregarious and — we soon discover — passing. Clare proceeds to inveigle her way into the life, marriage and Harlem community of Irene, eventually becoming a destabilising influence on all three. Passing features a series of gorgeously shot episodes that are often, in isolation, dramatically oblique but ultimately combine to form a deeply disquieting experience.
In cinemas
Kevin Maher
Dalgliesh
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