Stories · Film · 2021
Passing, reframed
Rebecca Hall's adaptation returns Nella Larsen's questions to the screen in a deliberately constrained black-and-white frame.
Rebecca Hall wrote and directed an adaptation of Nella Larsen's novel that premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2021 and was released by Netflix that November. Tessa Thompson plays Irene and Ruth Negga plays Clare.
Hall shot the film in black and white, in a nearly square frame. The choice does not just evoke the 1920s. It takes away the viewer's easy cues. On screen, nobody's color can be judged by comparison with the colors around them, so the audience is left guessing at a character the way the characters guess at each other. Thompson's Irene watches everything. Negga's Clare laughs a little too loudly. The film keeps Larsen's uncertainty, including her ending.
Hall has spoken publicly about her own family history as part of what drew her to the novel.
Why it still matters
The adaptation reminds viewers that the novel was never really about who could be fooled. It is about who is watching, what they want to see, and what it costs the people being watched.