Starring: Rachel Weiss, Rachel McAdams, Alessandro Nivola, and Anton Lesser
Distributor: Roadshow Films
Runtime: 114 mins. Reviewed in Jun 2018
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This British film is based on the 2006 novel of the same name by Naomi Alderman. It tells the story of a woman, who returns to an orthodox Jewish community in North London after she had a teenage romance with a female school friend, years before. The movie is the English language debut of Chilean Director, Sebastian Lelio, who directed the Academy Award-winning film, “A Fantastic Woman” (2017).
Ronit Krushka (Rachel Weisz) works as a fiercely independent photographer in New York City. While there, she receives a message that her father (Anton Lesser), a respected orthodox Chief Rabbi, has died in London after delivering a sermon on “the power to disobey”, which her father sermonised as the expression of free will. She returns to her family home. Her childhood friend, Esti (Rachel McAdams) is there, and Esti is married to another childhood friend of hers, Dovid Kuperman (Alessandro Nivola), who the community regards as her father’s “spiritual son and successor”. Ronit is treated coolly by nearly everyone she meets, even Dovid.
Years before, both her father and his community shunned Ronit for her sexual attraction to Esti. On her return, Ronit acts cautiously, but her attraction to Esti comes back, and Esti responds to her feelings. The movie soon becomes a tale of forbidden love in a tight-knit, repressed community, which revolves around complex emotions and “tangled lives”. Ronit’s life style is the exact opposite to what her father has taught her, and what he believed in; Esti struggles with what she would lose if she resurrected her feelings towards Ronit; and the relationship they both have to Dovid creates cross currents that swirl around them, emotionally.
Sebastian Lelio directs his film masterfully as a challenge to conformity. Ronit yearns for sexual freedom, which is against her father’s wishes; Esti wants an emotional connection with someone that is more than service to others; and Dovid is a man of propriety who wants conformity to what his community and his faith have led him to expect. All three characters are conflicted, and they grapple with different choices. The movie concludes with each of them making their choice freely, but freedom means something surprising for the one who is most conflicted.
The movie has particularly strong sexual scenes, but the message is clear that the passionate relationship between Ronit and Esti signifies that free sexual expression comes at a price. This is a film that doesn’t judge, and stays at the level of conflicting emotions – Dovid is kind and cruel to those he loves; Ronit wants to respect her father’s wishes, but can’t; and Esti wants to be loyal to her husband, but feels trapped by her past. Each of them is flawed, and they live in an imperfect world, where humans can choose (echoing the words of Ronit’s father) to “deviate from God’s purpose”. This complex, sparsely scripted film is much more than a female love story. It is a story about personal expression, the pressures of conformity, and the clash of freedom of choice with religious faith. The film argues in very many ways that there are myriad complexities to being human.
The acting performances of all three main characters are outstanding. Rachel Weisz captures Ronit’s conflicts in her every expression. Rachel McAdams conveys naturally the pressures of someone wanting to resist conformity; and Alessandro Nivola, as the wounded husband, is superb. The choices for all the key players in this film are depicted as grey, and the film’s sombre feel is delivered by Sebastian Lelio in a measured, controlled way.
This is a thoughtful and engrossing movie that raises more issues than it answers. We are not sure what disobedience is at stake, and what kind of disobedience we ought to consider more relevant than others. What helps to make this movie distinctive is the knowledge that Sebastian Lelio would want it just that way. The film brilliantly extends his core concern for exploring the emotional conflicts of persons trapped in situations they have come to perceive as impossible.
Peter W. Sheehan is Associate of the Australian Catholic Office for Film and Broadcasting
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