The presumed dead-and-buried practice of racial passing by light-skinned blacks in the United States decades ago is returned to center-stage in Passing, a delicate, sensitive, intentionally claustrophobic and not entirely limber directorial debut from the protean British stage performer Rebecca Hall.
Based on the recently resurrected 1929 novel by Nella Larsen, which was a modest success in its time, the film is indisputably intriguing for its look at a very particular convention about which younger generations know very little.
But the adaptation is also rather arch and aridly decorous, with a well-rehearsed rather than spontaneous feel that sometimes weighs things down.
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