It is shot in black and white: a smart choice, because the shifting tones make everything more, not less ambiguous. The movie looks like a James VanDerZee photo of the Harlem Renaissance come to life. Both parents are seeking to protect their boys, but in opposite ways. They fight constantly over whether their young sons should be shielded from racism at their tender age (Clare's preference), or educated about it (Brian wants them forewarned about the world's ugly realities). Brian Redfield has been urging his wife for several years now to agree to move from America to Brazil, which he assumes will be less toxic to Black people than lynch-happy America has proven to be. The marriage to her handsome doctor husband that she'd so prized feels less perfect than it once was. Suddenly Clare's risk-taking (or recklessness, depending on how one looks at passing) makes Irene feel staid and ordinary. And Clare's reappearance raises internal and external tensions in Irene's life, too. Here lies the central question of the film: Can you pass in and out of your racial identity? Clare's frequent uptown visits to Irene's family and her cadged invitations to social events held by Harlem's Black elite - even while married to her unsuspecting white husband - say "yes." Clare is welcomed by the chic, socially conscious Harlem crowd that seems to make being Black much more interesting than the bleached, easier existence she has chosen for herself.īut as Irene initially suspected, things will not end well. Her pale skin and blonde hair caught the eye of a wealthy, bigoted businessman who assumed she was white she allowed him to assume, and they married.Ĭlare's renewed relationship with Irene awakens in her an interest in becoming part of - or at least occasionally visiting - the Black community she abandoned.
(Her Black mother is long gone the book doesn't say how or why.) The aunts tolerated - but did not embrace - Clare, so as soon as she was an adult, she fled their household and began living as a white woman. If you haven't read the book, here's the story: Clare Kendry is a mixed-race woman raised by her biracial father's white aunts after he dies. Producers Forest Whitaker and Nina Yang Bongiovi agreed, and their company Significant Productions backed the film.
But I do have an experience of being raised by people who were also raised by people who made choices that were shaped by living in a racist society." Which, she felt, qualified her to adapt Larsen's story for the screen. "I don't know what that feels like because I present as white, I go through the world as white. "I don't have any experience of being a Black person in America," she added. Hall herself grew up in England as white.
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