Mill Valley Film Festival 44

Tessa Thompson and Ruth Negga deliver their most powerful performances to date in this exquisitely nuanced drama centered on one form of Black resistance to the Jim Crow one-drop rule (“passing as white”), and the complexities of privilege and sacrifice that follow.  Director Rebecca Hall’s elegant adaptation of Nella Larsen’s 1929 novella focuses on two former high school classmates, Irene (Thompson) and Clare (Negga), whose chance encounter at a stylish New York City tea salon leads to a rekindling of their friendship, and the realization of how similar and divergent their lives have become. Both are married, well-off, with children, but while Irene is comfortable as a high-class Harlem society wife (often admonishing her darker skinned household help), Clare, passing as white, is married to an unabashed racist and confined to an isolated life of deception and lies. With fine supporting performances from André Holland and Alexander Skarsgård, Hall navigates the terrain of Black identity and skin tone discrimination (colorism) with a masterful hand and compassionate vision.