Rebecca Hall (2021)
It’s an enduring tradition for successful young screen actors to let the film world know that ‘What I really want to do is direct’. These actors are nearly always male – not surprising given the even more enduring imbalance between numbers of men and women film-makers. With the numbers starting to shift (a bit), perhaps it’s not surprising either that two high-profile entries in the programme for this year’s London Film Festival are made by youngish women – both established acting names, whom you’d expect to be still in their acting prime. These newcomers to directing ranks also have sole screenplay credit for their picture – in both cases, adapting a novel written by a woman. The films are Maggie Gyllenhaal’s The Lost Daughter and, first out of the traps, Rebecca Hall’s Passing.
First published in 1929, Nella Larsen’s Passing drew on the author’s own mixed race heritage to explore the not uncommon contemporary practice of ‘racial passing’ whereby light-skinned African Americans ‘passed’ as white in society. (I haven’t read the book.) The starting point of Hall’s film is a chance meeting, as thirty-somethings, of two women of colour who haven’t seen each other since they were friends in girlhood. Irene (Tessa Thompson) and Clare (Ruth Negga) both now lead middle-class lives in New York but there the similarities end. Reenie is married to a fellow African American, Brian Redfield (André Holland), a doctor; they have two sons; Reenie serves on the committee of the Negro Welfare League. Not only is Clare married to a white man; she passes as a white woman – and her businessman husband, John Bellew (Alexander Skarsgård), is racist.
Clare becomes an increasingly frequent visitor to the Redfields’ Harlem home and part of their social circle, which includes Black and white liberal friends. The latter include Hugh Wentworth (Bill Camp), who’s astonished to learn, when Reenie confides in him, that Clare isn’t white. While Clare is seemingly drawn to her old friend’s world because she feels more comfortable there, Reenie appears to be physically attracted to Clare. There are hints – and Reenie is suspicious – that Brian is, too. An increasingly tense situation turns suddenly tragic at a gathering hosted by another couple in the Redfields’ circle, Felise and Dave Freedland (Antoinette Crowe-Legacy and Gbenga Akinnagbe). John interrupts proceedings, demanding to see his wife. He confronts Clare, who is standing by an open upstairs window. It’s unclear whether she falls or is pushed by John to her death in the street below. That’s the end of the film.
Also unclear, to this viewer, was why the window in the Freedlands’ apartment was wide open when it was snowing outside. By this stage of Passing, though, I could hazard a guess: the snow increased the impact of the image that Rebecca Hall was able to create. It seems more than apt that the film is shot in black and white, and the cinematographer, Eduard Grau, does a beautiful job – but the beauty is nearly relentless, and bespeaks Hall’s over-deliberate artfulness. Her debut feature is breathtakingly inert, thanks in no small part to the performance, presumably encouraged by the director, of Tessa Thompson. Reenie seems to take ages to change her expression, let alone her mood – with the result that Passing feels much longer than its actual (98-minute) running time. Ruth Negga is more vivid as Clare but her playing, too, is excessively considered. The best performance comes from André Holland as Brian. The rhythm of his line readings and facial movement seems natural yet – magically – not incongruent with the slow-motion acting going on around him.
When Reenie and Clare first see each other again, in a downtown New York restaurant, both are pretending to be white: Reenie wears a veil and face make-up to blanch her complexion. As I understood it, this was a first – and a last – for her. I wasn’t sure what motivated her experiment, especially since the story Hall tells describes much more of Reenie and Brian’s life together than Clare and John’s. The result is interesting, simply because it’s so unusual to see a film set in 1920s New York in which Black characters are not only middle-class but move easily in a liberal-verging-on-bohemian social circle. The emphasis feels odd, nevertheless, in view of Passing’s primary concern, even its raison d’être.
12 October 2021
