What would you do if a long-lost friend suddenly reappeared, having stripped away her identity to “pass” as white in a deeply segregated world?
That is the haunting premise at the heart of Passing (2021), Rebecca Hall’s faithful visual adaptation movie of Nella Larsen’s seminal 1929 novel. Set against the cultural boom of the Harlem Renaissance, the film follows two light-skinned Black women, Irene Redfield (Tessa Thompson) and Clare Kendry (Ruth Negga), whose lives take radically different paths despite their shared racial heritage.
When the two women reconnect after years apart, their contrasting choices reveal the desperate and often conflicting ways Black women navigated the cruel social hierarchy of 1920s America. Irene represents upper-middle-class stability in Harlem, a life that gives her a sense of security but also a quiet air of moral superiority over Clare. Clare, meanwhile, has chosen to “pass” as white, severing herself from her Black identity in exchange for the financial security and social privileges denied to her because of her race.
But Clare’s return unsettles the comfortable world Irene has built. Driven by a deep craving to reconnect with her own community, Clare slips back into Irene’s life, gradually exposing how fragile the boundaries between “Black” and “white,” “rich” and “poor,” and even “straight” and “queer” can be.
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Passing may appear, at first, to be a story primarily about race. But both Larsen’s novel and Hall’s adaptation offer something much more complicated. Beneath the story of racial passing lies a layered critique of class privilege, gender expectations, sexuality, domesticity, and the ways marginalized people are forced to perform versions of themselves in order to survive.
On its surface, Passing is a razor-sharp critique of America’s rigid racial hierarchy. Hall reinforces this visually through the film’s striking black-and-white aesthetic, exposing both the artificiality of racial categories and the brutality of segregation.
The minimalist, melancholic jazz piano score by Devonté Hynes further intensifies the film’s psychological tension. Rather than relying on dramatic orchestral swells, the music feels fragmented and unresolved. Its off-beat piano strikes and lingering chords mirror the fractured and anxious minds of Irene and Clare, who are constantly haunted by the possibility that their carefully constructed identities might collapse under society’s unforgiving gaze.
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Through Clare Kendry, Larsen also deconstructs the classic literary trope of the “tragic mulatto”—a 19th-century stereotype that portrayed mixed-race people as permanently trapped between two racial worlds. Clare’s decision to pass is not simply about wanting to become white. It is a calculated response to a society in which whiteness provides access to safety, wealth, and social status.
She marries John Bellew, a virulently racist white man, while concealing her Black ancestry from him. By doing so, Clare gains access to privileges that would otherwise be unavailable to her. Race becomes, in her circumstances, something that can be performed and manipulated for comfort and survival.
Irene makes a different choice. She lives openly as a Black woman in Harlem, married to Brian, a respected Black physician, and dedicates herself to community uplift. Yet her relationship with race is not as straightforward as it first appears.
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Despite her vocal pride in her Black identity, Irene occasionally “passes” temporarily herself. She enters white-only spaces and enjoys privileges that are technically inaccessible to her, such as drinking iced tea in an upscale hotel.
This detail is important because it shows that passing is not only about racial identity. It is also deeply connected to class.
Irene’s relationship with her household further exposes this contradiction. In her paper “‘Working Like a Colored Person’: Race, Service, and Identity in Nella Larsen’s Passing” (2013), scholar Mary Wilson examines Zulena, the Redfield family’s Black maid. Wilson points to the hypocrisy in Irene’s position: she condemns racial discrimination while simultaneously participating in a domestic system that places another Black woman in a subordinate position.
Colorism makes their circumstances even more unequal. Zulena is described as having “mahogany-colored skin,” meaning that she does not possess the same ability to pass as Irene or Clare.
Here, racial and class hierarchies do not simply exist between Black and white communities. They operate within the Black community itself.
The film makes this contradiction particularly visible. While the novel can explore Irene’s internal thoughts through narration, Hall relies heavily on body language and visual composition. Irene adopts the rigid etiquette of white upper-class respectability when interacting with Zulena, effectively performing the role of a white matriarch within her own home.
Irene has the privilege of passing when it benefits her. Zulena does not.
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That distinction demonstrates one of the film’s most uncomfortable truths: even among marginalized communities, access to privilege is unevenly distributed.
If race and class determine how Irene and Clare navigate the public world, patriarchal expectations shape what they are expected to become at home.
Both women are constrained by the gender norms of the 1920s, which demand submissiveness, domesticity, passivity, and devotion to marriage. But they respond to that domestic cage in very different ways.
Irene is trapped in the role of the perfectionist housewife and mother. She is obsessed with maintaining control: keeping her home pristine, shielding her sons from the harsh realities of racism, and preserving the image of a respectable family.
Her husband, Brian, increasingly resents this worldview. He wants their children to understand the racism surrounding them, while Irene prefers to protect them from it. Their disagreement is not merely a marital conflict; it reflects two different ways of confronting racial violence.
Clare, meanwhile, lives a much more dangerous lie. She performs the role of a beautiful, obedient trophy wife to a racist white man. Her entire existence depends on maintaining a facade that could collapse the moment her husband discovers her racial identity.
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Yet Clare’s presence in Irene’s life gradually destabilizes everything Irene has tried to control.
Clare charms Irene’s children. She develops an intimate rapport with Brian. She moves through Irene’s carefully controlled domestic world with an effortless confidence that Irene both admires and fears.
Eventually, Irene convinces herself that Clare and Brian are having an affair.
But the suspicion is never proven. More importantly, it can be understood as a psychological defense mechanism. Irene projects a forbidden desire onto her husband, transforming her own complicated attraction to Clare into the supposedly more socially acceptable narrative of heterosexual infidelity.
This is where Passing becomes particularly fascinating from a queer feminist perspective.
One of the most compelling dimensions of Larsen’s narrative is its intense queer subtext. In the 1920s, openly expressing same-sex desire could be dangerous, particularly for women whose social and economic survival was already constrained by race and gender. Larsen therefore embeds desire in metaphors, physical descriptions, glances, and seemingly ordinary interactions.
When Irene first encounters Clare at the hotel, Larsen uses imagery associated with flowers such as jonquil and narcissus to convey Irene’s fascination. Her attraction is described less as a rational decision than as an almost involuntary pull.
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Hall translates this subtext visually. The camera lingers on Clare’s face, lips, body, and movements. Irene’s gaze repeatedly rests on Clare in ways that suggest fascination extending beyond friendship.
The film rarely announces this desire explicitly. Instead, it allows viewers to experience the ambiguity alongside Irene.
Brian’s character also carries suggestive undertones. His marriage to Irene is emotionally distant and sexually cold, symbolized physically by their decision to sleep in separate bedrooms. His persistent desire to move to Brazil—understood within the historical context as a place perceived to be more racially diverse and potentially more tolerant of homosexuality—can be read as another indication of a desire for freedom that he cannot articulate directly.
As scholar Deborah McDowell argues in From Black Female Sexuality in Passing (2007), Irene’s repressed desire for Clare contributes to her growing obsession with the possibility of an affair between Clare and Brian.
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In this reading, jealousy becomes more than jealousy. Irene’s buried attraction mutates into possessiveness. What initially appears to be concern about her marriage and social standing becomes an increasingly destructive fixation on Clare.
The closer Clare gets, the more Irene’s carefully constructed identity begins to unravel. This is ultimately what makes Passing so powerful: it refuses to present identity as something simple, fixed, or freely chosen.
Clare “passes” as white to gain access to safety and privilege. Irene, who refuses to abandon her Black identity, nevertheless passes temporarily into white spaces when doing so gives her access to comfort. Both women perform class respectability. All of them are expected to perform heterosexual femininity. Both suppress aspects of themselves to remain socially acceptable.
Their choices are different, but neither woman is truly free.
Clare pays for her racial passing with isolation and fear. She has access to wealth and whiteness, but she must live alongside a husband who would likely reject her violently if he discovered the truth. Her whiteness is therefore both her shield and her prison.
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Irene, meanwhile, gains security by adhering to the conventions of respectable Black middle-class life. But the more she attempts to control her surroundings, the more she suppresses her own desires.
The tragedy of Passing lies precisely in this contradiction. Passing can provide temporary access to privilege, but it also demands a sacrifice.
Ultimately, both Larsen’s 1929 novel and Hall’s 2021 adaptation illustrate something remarkably close to what we now understand as intersectionality, decades before the term was formally developed by Kimberlé Crenshaw.
Larsen understood that Black women could not experience gender oppression separately from race and class. These structures overlapped, producing forms of vulnerability and privilege that could not be understood independently.
Hall preserves this complexity through the film’s tight 4:3 aspect ratio and stark black-and-white cinematography. The narrow frame creates an almost claustrophobic atmosphere, reflecting how little room Irene and Clare have to exist outside the identities society has assigned to them.
Every form of passing comes with a cost. Clare sacrifices her cultural roots and lives with the constant fear of exposure. Irene sacrifices her psychological freedom as she tries to suppress her desires and maintain a sense of moral superiority. Zulena, meanwhile, is denied even the limited mobility that passing can provide because her darker skin makes that option unavailable.
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The film therefore asks a question that goes beyond race. How much of ourselves are we willing—or forced—to give up in order to belong?
Despite extensive academic attention, Passing remains relatively under-discussed in mainstream cultural conversations. That is unfortunate for a work of its complexity and historical significance.
Created by Nella Larsen, a pioneering Black female writer of the Harlem Renaissance, and adapted for the screen by Rebecca Hall, the film offers a deeply intimate examination of how systems of race, class, gender, and sexuality shape the identities available to us.
More importantly, Passing reminds us that identity is never formed in isolation. It is negotiated through institutions, social expectations, economic privilege, family, desire, and the constant gaze of other people.
Nearly a century after Larsen wrote the original novel, that critique still feels painfully relevant.
The categories may have changed, but the pressure to perform belonging has not disappeared. People continue to hide parts of themselves to access safety, respectability, wealth, or acceptance. Some are able to move between social worlds; others are permanently excluded from that possibility.
That is why Passing is about so much more than race. It is about the masks people wear when society makes authenticity too expensive—and what happens when those masks begin to crack.
(Editor: Salsabila Putri Pertiwi)
(Picture source: IMDb)
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