This review of “Passing” was first published after the film’s premiere at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival.
Face half-covered with a beautiful hat, Irene Redfield (Tessa Thompson), a biracial woman, wanders into establishments that would be off-limits to her if she couldn’t pass as white. On one of those undercover escapades, she runs into a friend from her youth, Clare (Ruth Negga), now a blonde living full time as a white wife. The ramifications of their camouflage lie at the center of “Passing,” Rebecca Hall’s impressively refined and superbly acted directorial debut, which she adapted from Nella Larsen’s novel set in 1920s Harlem.