Passing – nf
****

This is a complicated subtle film which deals with a very sensitive subject.

We meet two women who are apparently old friends but have not seen each other in a long time and come upon each other in a chance meeting. They are both light-skinned black women who have gone on different paths since they were friends in the past. Irene (Tessa Thompson) identifies as being black and is married to a black physician(Andre Holland). They have two sons and live in an upper-class lifestyle in Harlem in Manhattan. Clare (Ruth Negga) on the other hand, while similarly light skinned has identified as white and is married to a white man (John Skarsgard) who not only does not know about her true black identity but is openly bigoted against anyone black. By the appearance of the cars shown, the time period is the 1930s.

Unbeknownst to her husband, Clare attends some social gatherings with Irene and her husband, where she can identify as being black. There is a suggestion of an attraction or perhaps an affair between Clare and Irene’s husband as well as a hint of a sexual attraction between the two women. Things culminate where both couples attend another social gathering and things come to a fatal ending.

The film, based on a novel of the same name operates on multiple levels of the theme of “passing”. The main depiction is shown in the term used for a black person who is “passing” as a white one. It is also noted in the possibility of a gay man “passing” as straight. We see, also, a fraught relationship “passing” as a strong one. As one of the characters, thoughtfully states, “things are not always what they seem.”

It is interesting that Director Rebecca Hall is a white woman with a Black Grandfather who passed as white or Native American and this may have been part of her motivation to deal with this sensitive, contemporary and important subject.

The film is well worth seeing.

***

Loving ( Prime Video, VUDU,

This 2016 film is a re-creation of a story behind a very important Supreme Court case, which struck down a Virginia Law forbidding inter-racial marriage and conception of children between an inter-racial couple and by doing so established nationwide precedents. The historical significance of this event makes this movie a riveting cinematic experience. Jeff Nicolas who wrote the screenplay was also the director. Ruth Negga and Joel Edgerton were the co-stars as Mildred and Richard Loving. The movie was nominated for various awards.

We both felt that weakness of the film was the passiveness of Mr. Loving. We can easily understand the tremendous fears that anyone in his situation would have as his loving marriage was threatened as was the potential damage to his three children if the parents had to go to jail, but we missed the inner turmoil and conflict that he must have had, which we could see to some degree in his wife. While we understand the immense historical significance of this case, we also believe that there was room for a dramatic exposition of its importance in our society, which could have been explained by historical film clips about this important historical event. Thus while the film should be seen for its historical and social value, it had much to be desired from a cinematic point of view. (2020)