{"id":60513,"date":"2021-02-02T03:38:48","date_gmt":"2021-02-02T03:38:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=60513"},"modified":"2021-02-02T03:39:10","modified_gmt":"2021-02-02T03:39:10","slug":"passing-review-rebecca-halls-subtle-provocative-directorial-debut","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=60513","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Passing\u2019 Review: Rebecca Hall\u2019s Subtle, Provocative Directorial Debut"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u2018Passing\u2019 Review: Rebecca Hall\u2019s Subtle, Provocative Directorial Debut<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Variety<\/a>
\n2021-01-31<\/p>\n

Jessica Kiang<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

<\/a>
\nEduard Grau<\/small><\/p>\n

A superbly performed study of racialized longing and feminine dissatisfaction in 1920s New York<\/a>, lit by searing intelligence and compassion.<\/em><\/p>\n

t starts in sweltering heat; it ends in freezing weather. And in between, as the temperature gradually drops, Rebecca Hall\u2019s<\/a> \u201cPassing<\/a>,\u201d based on Nella Larsen\u2019s 1929 novel<\/a>, calmly brings the diffuse racial landscape of prohibition-era New York City<\/a> into crystalline, gorgeously shot focus. This radically intimate exploration of the desperately fraught concept of \u201cpassing<\/a>\u201d \u2014 being Black but pretending to be white \u2014 ought to be too ambitious for a first-time filmmaker, but Hall\u2019s touch is unerring, deceptively delicate, quiet and immaculate, like that final fall of snow.<\/p>\n

On a hot summer day, Irene (Tessa Thompson<\/a>) is downtown on an errand. Her visible discomfort, the way she tries to retract into herself, to hide behind the gauzy brim of a hat that cuts her eyeline in two, is a silent evocation of how uncomfortable she is under the gazes of the white people around her. This time, anyway, she is mostly projecting: No one takes much notice, nothing too alarming happens. But then suddenly, stepping into the full beam of all that projection and sometimes catching the light, there\u2019s Clare (Ruth Negga<\/a>), a childhood friend visiting from Chicago<\/a>, now unrecognizably glamorous, with a perfect swoop of blonde hair and arched, lightened brows framing silent-movie-It-Girl<\/a> eyes…<\/p>\n

Read the entire review here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A superbly performed study of racialized longing and feminine dissatisfaction in 1920s New York, lit by searing intelligence and compassion.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,5,8,6462,20,25],"tags":[31278,87,28879,827,19672,23493],"class_list":["post-60513","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-book-reviews","category-media-archive","category-passing-2","category-usa","category-women","tag-jessica-kiang","tag-nella-larsen","tag-rebecca-hall","tag-ruth-negga","tag-tessa-thompson","tag-variety"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60513","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=60513"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60513\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":60516,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60513\/revisions\/60516"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=60513"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=60513"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=60513"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}