PASSING (A-minus) - Actress Rebecca Hall pens a script and sits behind the camera to direct a period piece about the reconnection of two former high school friends, both black, one of whom passes as white in segregated 1920s America. Hall conjures up a specific world brought to life by a pair of powerhouses: Ruth Negga and Tessa Thompson, who expertly explore depths of emotion while juggling dialogue that has a subtle air of the era's bebop jazz to it.
Thompson is Irene, married to a doctor, Brian (Andre Holland), and raising two boys in a middle-class milieu in Harlem. Negga ("Loving") is Clare, a free spirit married to a virulently racist white man (Alexander Skarsgard). Moving back to New York, Clare infiltrates Irene's family, connecting with the husband, playing auntie to the boys, even shooting the breeze with the maid/cook. Clare also makes the social scene with Irene, Brian and Hugh (Bill Camp), a noted writer and bon vivant who is skeptical of Clare. We get hints of what these two women were like together as teenagers but never get a true grip on the depth of that earlier connection.
Hall, working from a 1929 novel by Nella Larsen, captures the subtleties of a fraught female friendship, and she adds layers of nuance to the character interactions throughout, especially Clare's ease with Irene's husband and friends, which introduces an element of jealousy but not in an obvious way. The dialogue -- especially as it sometimes sneakily overlaps -- is both sharp and lovely, even poetic in the manner of Shakespeare's iambic pentameter, though much more stripped down. (As one character intones: "We're all of us passing for something or other.") Meantime, the visuals in the black-and-white cinematography have a washed-out haze to them, as if reproduced from the women's clouded memories. Spare tinkly, jangly piano interludes add to a sense of hallucinatory dread.
Thompson, especially, excels in close-ups, as the fulcrum in this warren of relationships. Irene is melancholy, spending her afternoons napping the day away and rousting herself to perform for everyone in her life, including a charity that she devotes her time to (to the detriment of the passion in her marriage). Negga is wide-eyed and masked to the world, rarely giving a hint to the emotional toll of tamping down her identity and roots. Clare is reveling in the rediscovery of her heritage (from soul food to the company of handsome black men) but she teeters on the tightrope she is dancing along.
This is a satisfying mix of grit and mood and the quiet longing of two women reaching toward and away from the worlds that have been created for them and which both comfort and entrap them. Hall, of mixed race herself, seems to have an innate feel for this internal struggle of not only racial identity but also the role of women a century ago.
HIVE (B) - This is a touching feminist cri de coeur but a bit of a by-the-numbers character profile set in the wake of the horrors of Kosovo in the 1990s. Writer-director Blerta Basholli, in her feature debut, chronicles the daily struggles of Fahrije (Yllka Gashi), who battles old-world misogyny while she awaits definitive word on the fate of her husband, suspected of being one of the many men and boys of Albanian dissent slaughtered or disappeared under Serb occupation. (It is based on a true story.)
Desperate to fend for her two teenage kids and her handicapped father-in-law, Fahrije gets entrepreneurial and begins manufacturing ajvar, a roasted-red-pepper relish. She encourages other women to defy the patriarchy that forbids women working and join her project. The appeal here is in the can-do spirit and the grit Fahrije shows in overcoming the odds.
The problem here is that Basholli occasionally traffics in simple stereotypes of the old men and fails, eventually, to rise much above the conventions of the standard underdog tale. Gashi, with a bit of a masculine air and look about her, is an interesting choice for this story, and she does a good job of inhabiting Fahrije as she fends off the slings and arrows, all while hanging in limbo between mourning her husband and holding out hope for his improbable return. The depictions of the life of the working poor are compelling, even if you have a hunch about how the twin narratives here will turn out.
BONUS TRACK
"Passing" sounds as good as it looks. And the closing credits are haunted by the lazy bluesy strains of "The Last Tears of a Deceased" by Tsegue-Maryam Guebrou, an Ethiopian nun born in 1923:
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