Movie Review: Disobedience

Disobedience *** ½ / *****

Directed by: Sebastián Lelio.

Written by: Sebastián Lelio & Rebecca Lenkiewicz based on the novel by Naomi Alderman.

Starring: Rachel Weisz (Ronit Krushka), Rachel McAdams (Esti Kuperman), Alessandro Nivola (Dovid Kuperman), Allan Corduner (Moshe Hartog), Anton Lesser (Rav Krushka), Nicholas Woodeson (Rabbi Goldfarb), David Fleeshman (Yosef Kirschbaum), Steve Furst (Dr Gideon Rigler), Bernice Stegers (Fruma Hartog).

 

There are essentially two stories going on in Sebastian Lelio’s Disobedience, and one of them is more interesting than the other. On the surface, it is a story about Ronit (Rachel Weisz), the daughter of a powerful Rabbi, in an insular, Orthodox community in London, who returns after years away upon her father’s death. She couldn’t take it inside the community, didn’t want to get married, and pump out children – so she has fled to New York, and not looked back. That is a story we’ve seen before – maybe not in the specifics, but certainly in the broad outlines – someone returns home to find the ways things have changed – and the ways in which they haven’t. But in Disobedience, I think it’s really just a way to get us, as outsiders, inside that community – because the far more fascinating story is that of Esti (Rachel McAdams) – Ronit’s childhood friend, who has stayed in the community, and married Dovid (Alessandro Nivola), a Rabbi who as a child Ronit’s father took in and taught, likely in part because, for reasons unexplained in the film, Ronit was an only child. There was a secret/not-so-secret relationship between Ronit and Esti as teenagers – one that they have both let go of in some ways, but when they come back together, the tension is palpable. Esti’s story is far more fascinating that Ronit’s.

 

This is Chilean director Sebastian Lelio’s third film in a row centered on women, his first in English, and like the previous two – Gloria and the Oscar winning A Fantastic Woman – you could describe the film as a low-key melodrama, that is short on narrative, and long on character. The film is full of emotions, and yet they very rarely bubble to the surface. This is because of the insular community in which it takes place – a world in which everyone is quiet and polite, but also strict. There is a way you do something, and you do not deviate. An early scene, in which Ronit finds herself surrounded by people she knew, and was once close to, is very telling. They are all openly critical of her, but in such a quiet, almost polite way. They pity her more than anything else – her lifestyle is wrong, but they don’t ever quite come out and say that. A lot of movie the movie takes place during scenes like this – scenes where people talk, but are not saying what they really mean. It wouldn’t be proper.

 

The only time characters really speak openly is when Ronit and Esti are together, alone. Even then, it takes a while – they talk around the elephant in the room for a long time, before they actually really talk about it at all. The sex scene between the two stars has been much discussed. It is, it must be said, erotic and sexy – but it’s more than that. It reveals who they are – especially Esti – as people far more than anything they say to each other.

 

What is refreshing about the movie is that it is a film about an oppressive religion – one that basically forces Esti to marry Dovid to “cure” her of being gay – and yet it sees the people in that religion as people – especially Dovid. It would be easy to make him into a villain – a symbol of the oppressive patriarchy, but he isn’t really that. Much hinges on the sermon about Free Will that the Rabbi was giving when he died – and which Dovid continues at a key scene late in the film, which reads two different ways. Also refreshing is that the affair between Ronit and Esti isn’t really portrayed as a grand, forbidden romance for the ages. It helps both women to figure out who they are – but their futures are not going to be intertwined.

 

Perhaps the film is a little too quiet, too subdued for its own its good. It is certainly too long for a movie where not a lot happens. You can only make things left unsaid until they finally are, dramatic for so long, and in the middle of the movie, you do kind of wish they’d just get on with it. But mostly, the film is quite good – intelligent, well-acted and well-made. No, it’s not quite the film A Fantastic Woman was – but it’s another solid film by Leilo.