ALSO SHOWING ... Deceit and desire in Jazz Age New York
LONG before it was a film, Passing (★★★✩✩ 12A, 98 mins) was a novel. Published in 1929, it was written by Nella Larsen, a mixed-race woman intrigued by issues of racial and sexual identity.
And now here’s the film, stylishly shot in black and white and a debut feature for Rebecca Hall, whose late father, Sir Peter Hall, also knew a bit about directing.
It’s slow-moving but kind of intoxicating, with dialogue that sometimes sounds stagey, and reminded me more than once of A Streetcar Named Desire. But it is very pleasing on the eye, and actually the ear, too; once you get used to it.
Moreover, Tessa Thompson and Ruth
Negga are both wonderful as Irene and Clare, childhood friends who accidentally encounter each other a decade later in Jazz Age New York.
Both women are mixed-race but Irene lives in Harlem as a black woman, married to a black doctor, while Clare passes herself off as white and is married to unreconstructed racist John (Alexander Skarsgard).
Perhaps the key line, as sexual desire also begins to flicker within their re-ignited friendship, comes when Irene says: ‘We’re all of us passing for something or other.’ No matter what colour we are or what society we live in, not many of us can argue with that. Antlers (★★✩✩✩, 15, 99 mins), directed by Scott Cooper and produced by Guillermo del Toro, is also about people who are not what they seem. It’s a laboured horror film, layered with metaphors about abuse and racism, set in smalltown Oregon.
A strong cast includes Jesse Plemons as the sheriff and Keri Russell as his sister, a teacher convinced that a vulnerable pupil of hers has a monstrous supernatural secret.
However, it’s young Jeremy T. Thomas, as the boy, who steals the show. Only it’s not really a show worth stealing.
■ BOTH films are in cinemas now. Passing will also stream on Netflix from November 10.