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The presumed dead-and-buried practice of racial passing by light-skinned blacks in the United States decades ago is returned to center-stage in Passing, a delicate, sensitive, intentionally claustrophobic and not entirely limber directorial debut from the protean British stage performer Rebecca Hall. Based on the recently resurrected 1929 novel by Nella Larsen, which was a modest success in its time, the film is indisputably intriguing for its look at a very particular convention about which younger generations know very little. But the adaptation is also rather arch and aridly decorous, with a well-rehearsed rather than spontaneous feel that sometimes weighs things down. Still, this is something very different from the usual fare both in cinemas and on the tube and, given the subject matter, it will attract the intellectually curious and culturally informed.

The phenomenon of passing was familiar to the wide public during the last century due to a handful of popular entertainments,...