Disobedience leaves its audience begging for more, having more questions than answers. Questions about the future of the two female protagonists, questions about Jewish faith and questions about love, both homo and heterosexual.
His first Englsih language debut Chilean director, Sebastián Lelio, offers a fascinating drama about lesbian love in an orthodox Jewish community.
Ronit Krushka (Rachel Weisz), a successful photographer in New York, learns of her father’s death and flies to England for his funeral. In stark contrast to her metropolitan and fashionable lifestyle, she returns to the same Jewish community which ex-communicated her decades earlier due to her rebellious nature and attraction to female friend, Esti.
On her return, Ronit is met with hostility from the Jewish community, who are all mourning the Rabbi’s (her father’s) death. Dovid (Alessandro Nivola), a friend from childhood who will probably become her father’s successor, seems to be the only person who welcomes her by allowing her to stay with him and his now wife, Esti (Rachel McAdams). Both Esti and Ronit get closer and passions quickly rekindle, throwing Esti’s position in society in the air. Esti struggles between the role of dutiful wife to potential Rabbi, Dovid, and sexual freedom with Ronit. Both female protagonists disrupt a world of honour and order within the Jewish community.
There is an overwhelming passion and eroticism to their reunion, played exquisitely by Weisz and McAdams, juxtaposing the conservative lovemaking of Esti and Dovid. McAdams portrays the role of anxious and confused Esti beautifully, with numerous camera shots of her face, in agony and despair. My favourite scene is when Dovid confronts Esti, after hearing of her relations with Ronit and McAdams screams “it has always been this way”. Wonderfully directed, this scene illustrates contemporary debates between sexual preference and religion as Esti tries to explain her sexual orientation: she is not a problem that can be cured, she was simply born this way. With dignity and poise, McAdams’ fantastic performance conveys the struggles when coming out in public, especially to conservative communities.
Overall, considering the troublesome subject matter, the tone of the film is extremely reserved, with its emotions restrained and the storytelling subdued. And perhaps this is exactly what mainstream cinema needs, to portray huge issues, such as sexual orientation and religion, in a composed way, perhaps highlighting how these debates are mundane. Mundane in the sense that they are quotidian; these serious issues and debates are prevalent in everyday life, happening under the radar, in the same reserved and restrained way the film presents.
Lelio reminds the viewer to look back at themselves and question the subdued biases and prejudices in their everyday lives.
Written by SJ Callender
SJ Callender is an MA student studying Culture and Thought after 1945. Her interests include on-screen representation, especially of minority groups, world literature and middle eastern politics.
