Rebecca Hall makes a strong impression with "Passing," her first movie as a writer-director. The film tells the story of two Black women in the 1920s, one of whom has lighter skin and is passing as white, and has a stylistic linearity and an overall feeling that's rare in modern movies. Hall creates a surface tension, but a quiet tension, one that's attenuated and seeps into daily life. It's shot in black-and-white, which evokes the era, but there's an extra gloss to it that makes it feel not unreal but a bit under glass. The veneer never shatters, but one gets the sense that if it did, there would be consequences. "Passing" is based on the 1929 novel of the same name by Nella Larsen, and it's a great advantage that the movie's source is in the past. If this story were attempted today, it would be about a social issue. One woman would be presented as right, and the other would be wrong. There would be a crucial realization three-quarters in, and then a moral to the story spelled out before the closing credits. Instead, "Passing" gets at the issues of race and identity through a story of human, complicated individuals. If there's a moral, it's not to be received but gleaned, and maybe only arrived at after a post-movie discussion. It's a sophisticated piece of work, slightly haunted, with an underlying sorrow that can't be resolved or remedied. Two women run into each other in late-1920s Manhattan. Irene (Tessa Thompson) is an upper-middle-class wife and mother living in Harlem with her Black husband (André Holland). Her childhood friend, Clare (Ruth Negga), whom she doesn't at first recognize, has bleached blond hair and lives her life perceived as white. Her white husband (Alexander Skarsgård), who is as racist as he is clueless, has no idea. In a wonderfully counterintuitive touch, it's Clare who most wants to renew the friendship with Irene and not the reverse, even though any connection with the past is a potential threat to Clare's present. Negga ("Loving") makes sense of all this in a radiant, poignant performance that conveys a jubilant, effervescent spirit stuck in a double bind. Clare has a hunger to be in the Harlem community like someone gasping for air. She is primarily life-loving, but her longing gives her a wistful quality. Clare's recklessness is contrasted with Irene's self-containment.