Tessa Thompson, co-star of ‘Passing,’ on the film’s themes and resonance

In Rebecca Hall’s “Passing” (based on the 1929 novel by Nella Larsen), Tessa Thompson portrays Irene who lives in 1920’s Harlem and reconnects with an old friend Clare, portrayed by Ruth Negga, who is passing as a white woman. Thompson feels the movie goes beyond just racial issues into ways we all try to pass. According to Thompson, Irere is “performing this idea of what it is to be a woman, a Black woman, and inside, she is unraveling because those performances aren’t really who she is.”