And the story at the center appears mellow: Two women, Irene , rekindle their friendship after years apart.
Irene and Clare are light-skinned Black women who can pass for white, but while the former rarely strays past the color line, the latter has crossed it entirely.
Based on the 1929 book by Nella Larsen, Passing, which starts streaming Wednesday on Netflix, is the rare film about race that treats the turbulence of its subject matter with a delicate touch.
But although Hall has said that writing the script helped her process her family’s history, the finished product doesn’t feel like the work of a debut director intimidated by a weighty premise.
Irene believes that she’s taken the moral path, having married a Black doctor and settled in Harlem, yet she’s also drawn to Clare’s audacity and welcomes her old friend when she shows up at her doorstep.
Slowly, Passing reveals how Irene pushes the limits of her identity to bolster her social status: She snipes at her darker-skinned housemaid and gossips about Clare with a white writer who attends the Negro Welfare League parties she helps organize.
The tragedy of Irene and Clare rests not in the question of whether the act of passing is morally defensible but in the fact that neither can fully provide an answer.