Change Your Life

“You dislike negros Mr. Bellew?”

“No, no, not at all… I hate them” says John Bellew, laughing sinfully, seated next to his Black wife. She laughs alongside him; seemingly unfazed. Sitting across from her is Irene, a visibly uncomfortable “negro” friend.

Based on Nella Larsen’s 1929 novel of the same name, Passing follows the reunion of two biracial childhood friends who had lost touch. Both women are Black, but given the fairness of their skin can ultimately pass as white. This has affected their lives in different ways. Clare Kendry (Ruth Negga) has been living as a wealthy white woman, and spends her days following John, who works in banking, on business trips while caring for their daughter Margery. Irene Redfield (Tessa Thompson) lives in Harlem as a Black woman, with a Black husband and two Black sons. When Clare brags about her white life, Irene surprises Clare by informing her, proudly it seems, that her two sons are dark and her husband can’t pass.

Passing, Rebecca Hall’s directorial debut, shows how unfounded perceptions of others can alter one’s personal identity. Prior to their unexpected encounter, both women seemed content with the lives they had made for themselves. Now, as their lives become entangled, they crave the freedom they perceive in that of the other. Clare envies Irene’s stability. Irene envies Clare’s ability to blend seamlessly into white culture. Through the prism of race, Passing traces the delicate line between fascination and jealousy.

Clare and Irene run into each other at the Drayton Hotel. It’s been more than a decade. Clare is almost unrecognizable to Irene, who pegged the old friend by her distinct laugh. She seems shocked, but also a bit impressed, that Clare was able to renovate her entire life so smoothly.

Surprisingly, Passing is less about Clare’s long-held secret than how, once Clare enters the picture, that secret comes to destabilize Irene’s life. After the hotel exchange, Clare integrates herself into Irene’s world in a strange effort to “reclaim” her blackness. She hangs around Irene’s Black family and Black friends and worships Irene’s apparent ability to stand proudly in her ethnicity. “You’d think they’d be satisfied being white,” Irene says to her husband as she lies in bed, telegraphing her own sense of personal dissatisfaction.

Passing takes place at the height of the Harlem Renaissance, a period of vibrant Black cultural production—and in some cases, wealth accumulation—in the context of an unabashedly racist society. Irene enacts anxieties of the moment. She and Brian, a doctor, live with their children in a brownstone with their own maid. Yet, despite her class and fair skin, she moves through the film timidly, paranoid that her race will bring punishment upon her. In an opening sequence, she walks the city with her head and eyes hidden behind a hat, avoiding eye contact with anyone white.

When in Clare’s presence, Irene seems to be content to share a home with a family that doesn’t pass. But her insecurity becomes conspicuous throughout the film. She shelters her sons. When her husband tries to tell them about news of a Black man’s lynching in Little Rock, she swiftly changes the subject and asks him to stop talking. “You are not to talk about the race problem,” she says. And even as Irene judges Clare for using her passing abilities to such a consequential effect, Irene herself actively uses her fair skin to her own advantage, when she is alone.

As Clare admires Irene’s life, Irene obsesses over Clare’s effervescence, her ability to gracefully steal the attention of anyone with whom she crosses paths. Irene is at times a confident woman, and she occasionally betrays streaks of elitism. But these pretenses crumble into naked insecurity when her life brushes up against that of her old friend. She comes to suspect her husband is falling for Clare and at a gathering at her house, she watches them chat, breathes heavily and angrily before dropping a teapot and shooting Clare a look. “It seems to me,” she screams at Bryan in an earlier scene, “you are a lot less content with what you’ve got when she’s not here.”

We never see Clare’s daughter, Margery, but early on, we perceive the predictable fact that their family has fragile dynamics of its own. Clare admits to Irene that, throughout her pregnancy, she feared her daughter would come out dark—revealing her ancestry. In another scene, John describes Clare as having been “as white as a lily” when their marriage began. He has since nicknamed her “Nig” because he suspected her skin was getting darker. Irene witnesses the marital exchange. The jocular banter leaves her shaken.

Passing never has a distinct climax. It is slow-paced, occasionally even boring, though Thompson and Negga’s performances are not to blame. Neither actor would necessarily “pass” in the real world, but they play their insecure characters well—Thompson especially, whose Irene accentuates in her own inadequacies as she unravels.

Clare and Irene’s oscillating mutual sentiments of idolization and resentment give Passing its depth. We often see Irene looking at Clare in the distance, with a look of admiration… or is it repugnance? Clare may have laughed as her husband mocked negros. Irene may speak highly and confidently of her Black family. But, though they experience the color line from different aspects, it leaves both women fundamentally insecure. ▩