Irene (Tessa Thompson) rarely passes for white. She fears for her safety too much to do so. When she does, white people, from cab drivers to store clerks, treat her with deference. See, passing is an act by which a person assumes the racial (or sexual) identity of the dominant culture so they might garner that identity’s advantages. For instance, in the opening scene, Irene wants to buy a toy for her sons in a white-owned shop; using her sun hat to obscure her eyes and face partially, she purchases the trinket under the allusion of whiteness. The rouse, however, brings her little ease.
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The dangerous act’s weight forces her to duck into a luxe hotel, only to recognize a long-estranged friend Clare (Ruth Negga). As opposed to Irene, who lives with her dark-skinned husband Brian (André Holland), and their two sons in Harlem, Clare is married to a violently racist white man, John (Alexander Skarsgård), who’s totally unaware of her Black background. The sudden reunion of Irene and Clare reawakens a repressed yearning, and a few concealed fears. Adapted from Nella Larsen’s 1929 novella of the same name, Rebecca Hall’s directorial debut, “Passing,” is a stewing black and white melodrama about racial passing that swims in its racial, sexual, and socio-economic undertones with steady strokes.
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The strain in “Passing” primarily stems from Irene and Clare’s mismatched temperaments. Irene chose not to make racial passing her life. She prefers the safe confines of the two-flat Harlem residence her husband Brian, a doctor, owns. In fact, the family is so well off they have a Black maid, Zulena (Ashley Ware Jenkins), whom the upper-class Irene treats with passive-aggression. Irene is quite content in her life. Quite comfortable in her refined flapper dresses and fashionable but practical pearls. Thompson even adopts a posh tone, which from time-to-time, in moments of frustration, slightly erodes away to reveal her concealed fear—losing the security of this life.
The blonde free-spirited Clare, on the other hand, re-enters Irene’s life with other wants. What’s enthralling about Clare is her subversion of the tragic mulatto stereotype. Because she embraces the freedom to pass white and return back to Blackness. It’s a comfort, albeit, a perilous northern comfort. And the flushed lighting in Eduard Grau’s handsome black-and-white photography further conceals Clare’s skin color. The wild child isn’t concerned with castigating herself. Married to a racist husband, who playfully calls her “nig” due to her lightly tan skin, accomplishes enough. Rather it’s seeing Irene again that spurs Clare to reintegrate into Black society not to mourn her ambiguous identity, but to woo Irene by way of Blackness.
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Clare and Irene’s uneasy dynamic more than teases a gay love story. And the film’s relaxed rhythm juxtaposes wonderfully from the cryptic onscreen tension. The more Clare hangs around Irene’s family, flirting with Brian and Irene, the more we wonder whether her motives are pure or predatory. That is, is she there to reconnect with her Blackness or unleash her latent passion for either the husband or wife? That ambiguity at first refuels Irene, only to then destroy her. She’s forced to confront the harms her dark-skinned sons can face in an anti-Black world; compelled to hear Brian tell graphic stories of lynchings in the south; made to realize how even refraining from passing doesn’t negate the benefits she receives from the safety of colorism. These hard truths, interlocked with Clare’s presence, reminds Irene how she sexually passes as straight.
Though the craft in “Passing” is brilliant, especially that fluttering impressionistic piano score, the overreliance on embellished compositions blunts Irene’s gay anxiety quicker than Irene herself. For instance, when Irene, along with Brian and Clare, visit the white writer Hugh (Bill Camp) at a rollicking jazz party, a simmering POV sees Irene’s eyes traveling down Clare’s backless dress. The shot offers the kind of smoldering interiority between Clare and Irene that’s woefully missing in the film’s studied aesthetics.
Hall places great pressure on her talented ensemble to deliver the film’s buried erotic nuance— whether it’s the unrequited attraction between Irene and Clare, a possible affair between Brian and Clare, or the marital tug-of-war between Brian and Irene. Their implied melodramatic ménage à trois is only as plausible as the repressed desires each actor decides to protrude. The way Holland interprets Brian’s frustration as the nebulous spouse and host, contracts well from Clare’s inoffensive flirtations, and Irene’s guilt. On the other hand, Thompson and Negga, through their searching eyes and layered presence, fill every frame with an undeniable temptation.
For her part, Hall struggles to visually render the characters’ incongruous identity. She tries purposefully blurred compositions and blindingly bright monochromatic cards. However, the crisp detail, arising in the film’s lyrical editing and medium shots conflicting with the Academy ratio, quells the story’s storminess. Some of this is, of course, by design. Hall wants these tempestuous squalls to peter out until they upsurge again. But they also make those upsurges difficult to come by.
“Passing” will catch many a viewer flat-footed. But the rarity of glacially paced Black lesbian period pieces means “Passing” is worth repeat viewings just to catch its string of minute calibrations—especially the delicate way Thompson and Negga dance in armed emotional landmines. One gets the sense that on second, third, and fourth viewings—the meaningful fruit this subtle narrative springs will multiply. Especially if we arrive already orientated to the characters’ racial and sexual trepidations.
At its core, “Passing” is about safety and comfort. The comfort unoffered to Black men during the ’20s. The solace denied to not just gay women, but Black lesbian women. The film’s shocking conclusion hides the offending hand. Is racism the culprit or the survivalist instincts born into oppressed people to hold on to their hard-earned comforts? With an incredible ensemble and an elegant eye, Hall’s “Passing” is a high-wire act of a debut that tackles its several thorny issues with nary a scratch. [B]
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