Sebastián Lelio (2017)

A self-respecting actor with just a single scene will make the most of it and Disobedience opens with a fine example of the phenomenon.   As the elderly Rav Krushka, Anton Lesser delivers a sermon to a North London synagogue congregation.  He does so in high theatrical style before keeling over.  That’s the last we see and hear from the rabbi, who dies in hospital a few days later, but both Lesser and the character he’s playing leave their mark on the film.  The theme of Rav Krushka’s sermon is free will.  He distinguishes three orders of God’s creation – angels, beasts and humans – and stresses the unique capacity of the third group to choose to disobey.  (Not sure this quite takes account of Lucifer but let that pass.)

The rabbi and his only child Ronit (Rachel Weisz) are estranged.  She now lives and works as a photographer in New York, where she receives a call informing her of her father’s death.  Ronit flies back to London and arrives at the home of childhood friend Dovid Kuperman (Alessandro Nivola), her late father’s disciple and now expected to take on his role as the synagogue’s spiritual leader.  Ronit is astonished to learn that Dovid has married Esti (Rachel McAdams), who was more than a childhood friend to her.  It emerges that the close relationship between the two young women led to the rupture between Ronit and her father.  On the latter’s advice, Esti chose the path of religious obedience by marrying Dovid, who not only is a respected figure within the local Orthodox Jewish community but also loves Esti.  Although surprised by Ronit’s reappearance, Dovid insists that she stay at his and Esti’s Hendon home in the days leading up to the hesped ceremony that will conclude the funerary rites for Rav Krushka.  As might be expected, Dovid is asking for trouble.  Marital disobedience ensues in the form of a passionate sexual relationship between his wife and Ronit.

My fault maybe but I didn’t understand several elements of the plot.  Who does Dovid think made contact with Ronit in New York?  In view of the previous relationship between her and Esti, which he seems to have been aware of, does he suspect his wife’s hand in this?  It transpires that Esti was responsible for the New York call although the caller was a man and it seems surprising, within the patriarchal community Sebastián Lelio describes, that Esti would have the authority to arrange this.  Rav Krushka has disinherited Ronit and bequeathed his estate to the synagogue; his daughter is allowed to go to his house to collect the few personal items of hers remaining there, and Esti accompanies her.  It’s there that their feelings for each other resurface, prompted tritely by a piece of evocative music that Ronit plays on a disc-player handily available in her father’s living room.  Soon afterwards, the two women (also asking for trouble) are spotted kissing in a public park.  A complaint is made to the headmistress of the local Jewish school where Esti teaches.  The headmistress summons Esti to her office but this isn’t a private interview:  it takes place in the presence of the couple who made the complaint.  Even though this seems extraordinary, Esti doesn’t mention it when she reports back to Ronit.  The headmistress then relays the complaint to Dovid, whether as Esti’s husband or as heir apparent to Rav Krushka is unclear.

As things between the three main characters reach crisis point, Ronit makes the decision to return immediately to America and books an evening flight for the same day.  The following morning, she’s sleeping at the airport when Dovid phones to tell her that Esti has disappeared.  Was the original flight cancelled?  Did Ronit, who now hurries back to North London, drop off and miss her plane?  Esti also returns home, to tell Dovid that she’s pregnant but wants her freedom so that their child is able to choose in due course whether or not to live as an Orthodox Jew.   As might be expected in this increasingly melodramatic story, he accedes to Esti’s request in the most public way possible – midway through his eulogy for Rav Krushka at the latter’s hesped, where Dovid also picks up where his late mentor’s sermon left off and declines appointment as the Rav’s successor.  The concluding events seem designed to be as emotionally wrenching as possible but they undermine what have developed as central themes of Disobedience.  If Dovid is so shackled by the rules of his religion, how can he so rapidly assimilate and assent to Esti’s sexuality and her need for independence?  (It’s not suggested that he’s renouncing his fundamental beliefs.)  As Ronit sets off on a second trip to the airport, Esti runs after her cab, which stops so that the two women can have a last embrace and promise to keep in touch.  Given what Esti has gone through to affirm her love for Ronit, why are they so uncertain about a future together?

Sebastián Lelio’s A Fantastic Woman premiered at the Berlin festival in February 2017, this film at Toronto six months or so later.  Although both dramas explore LGBT issues, the look and mood of Disobedience are very different from those of its immediate predecessor and tend to the monotonous.  Danny Cohen’s cinematography swathes proceedings in a glum half-light almost regardless of a scene’s location.  Matthew Herbert’s decidedly melancholy score is less varied than the music he wrote for A Fantastic Woman.  As on that film, Lelio co-wrote the screenplay, this time with Rebecca Lenkiewicz (who also shared the writing credit on Ida, with Pawel Pawlikowski).  The source material is a 2006 novel by Naomi Alderman.  Lelio and his main actors make the sex scenes in Disobedience, whether gay or straight, frank and convincing.  The story these sequences are part of is less persuasive.

Although her beauty and presence make Ronit magnetic, Rachel Weisz’s emotionality, not for the first time, is vague:  you see Ronit is worked up without getting a sense of what specifically she’s thinking or feeling.  Weisz is at something of a disadvantage beside her co-stars in that Lelio shows very little of Ronit’s life in New York.  There’s just a brief photo shoot (for the rest of the film, she might as well be, like Naomi Alderman’s Ronit, a financial analyst) and an even briefer bit of sex (which in retrospect suggests that Ronit is bisexual).  The scenes of Esti and Dovid teaching, respectively, secondary school and yeshiva students are more substantial, showing the couple outside their home but within the settled pattern of lives that Ronit’s return upsets.  (The choice of texts is obviously significant:  Esti’s pupils discuss a scene in Othello focusing on Desdemona’s alleged unfaithfulness, Dovid’s the curious fusion of sensual and spiritual rapture in the Song of Songs.)  Rachel McAdams portrays the pale, secretly intense Esti strongly but the best performance (and the best work I’ve seen from this actor since Junebug back in 2005) comes from Alessandro Nivola.  He realises very well Dovid’s security in his closed world and determination that his wife can be safely contained within it.  His later alternations between quiet reassurance and bursts of anger are startling.  It isn’t Nivola’s fault that Dovid’s conveniently speedy capitulation is so hard to accept.

24 November 2018