From Sundance: The Subtle Art of ‘Passing’

In 1929, Harlem Renaissance novelist Nella Larsen published “Passing,” a book that was revolutionary for its time. Focusing on two light-skinned Black women living in 1920s New York City, "Passing" tackled a myriad of underrepresented themes including racism, performative femininity, motherhood, class, and sexuality in a mere 93 pages. The book has since captivated countless people with its nuanced analysis of race and performative femininity, and British actress and first-time director Rebecca Hall, a white-passing biracial woman herself, was one such person. Her film adaptation, also titled “Passing,” premiered on Jan. 30 at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival.

Shot in black and white with a four by three aspect ratio, the film is reminiscent of 1920s American cinema, even though "Passing" is a story that would never have been shown on silver screens at its time. The smaller frame necessitated by the four by three ratio means that the contents within the frame carry an added purpose. They are there because Hall meant for them to be there.

The film stars “Sorry to Bother You” actress and Sundance alum Tessa Thompson as Irene Redfield, a refined, upper-class 1920s woman, who, while passing for white, runs into old friend Clare Kendry (Ruth Negga) doing the same. While both are Black women who can white-pass, they have chosen to live on opposite sides of the color line. Irene has a Black husband and lives in Harlem, while Clare marries a racist white man and dreams of returning to her roots.

Hall manages to capture the story's subtlety — forcing audiences to lean in and pay attention to the unseen and the unsaid. A prime example is the relationship between Irene and Clare: Irene is absolutely fixated on Clare, who, in turn, is overcome with a “wild desire,” but that intense desire is rarely explicitly shown. Thompson and Negga’s performances hone in on these subtextual elements without overplaying them — giving audiences more information with furtive glances than tension-laden dialogue — allowing viewers to be entranced solely by the infatuations and jealousies that color their friendship.

“Passing” pushes viewers to look beyond the superficial binaries presented by the plot — Black versus white, rich versus poor, powerful versus powerless — all of which are manifested in Clare's internal contradictions. She does not allow herself to be completely Black nor white, cunningly toying with the boundaries of each identity in whatever way suits her situation best. Her performance of whiteness is used not as a refusal of Blackness but rather as a way to cross the binary of rich and poor, powerful and powerless. Similarly, her relationship with Irene cannot be defined as merely platonic or sexual, rather someplace in between: a rekindled friendship, yes, but also tinged with the eroticism of mutual envy.

A process of translation is required to understand these binaries and where they’re broken, just as the black and white footage requires translation to understand what it’s depicting. And like the characters in the film, the footage isn’t truly defined by the binary of black or white — it’s gray. In a film about nuance and ambiguity, Hall’s stylistic decisions take on multiple shades of meaning.

While at a party, a white author asks Irene why she doesn’t white-pass like Clare does, to which she answers: “We’re all of us passing for something or another, aren’t we?”

Therein lies the driving force in "Passing." The women are never one thing or another, and instead are constantly caught in a game of appearances and performance — whether intentional or not. And in centering these intimate performances and their contradictions so skillfully, Hall gives Larsen’s timeless novel new life and dimension.

—Staff writer Sofia Andrade can be reached at sofia.andrade@thecrimson.com. Follow her on Twitter at @SofiaAndrade__.