TIFF 17 Film Review - Disobedience

Ronit (Rachel Weisz ) is a successful photographer in New York. The film opens with her on a shoot when she he gets a call that her father the principal Orthodox Rabbi in a North London orthodox community has died. His last act a frenzied sermon on free will that will hover over the balance of the action to come. Ronit who left on bad terms shows up at the reception for her father to the shocked looks of the community. She is reunited with her two childhood pals Dovid (Alessando Nivola) and Esti (Rachel McAdams) who are married seeming having turned to each other after Ronit's departure.

Sebastian Lelio continues to show that he is adept at telling stories with complicated female leads. A Fantastic Woman his other feature this year features a transgendered person determined to get the right to grieve a lost love. His prior film Gloria followed a mid-fifties woman who's very active in the Santiago, Chile dating scene. Here Lelio switches to English backed by a strong cast head into the dark corners of Jewish Orthodoxy to present a narrative of two women who break from tradition.

Esti is a symbol of repression. She is a teacher who's very frum as she walks the community streets sporting the obligatory off fitting wig. She does her duty of Friday night sex with Dovid only beginning to come out of her shell after a chance meeting with Ronit that leads to a rekindling of a long lost relationship near a favourite tree in a park. The pair separate until they steal off to a central London hotel room to unleash a half a lifetime of pent up feeling and emotions in a scene that will have the public and industry talking about for a long time. It's not exploitive but effective and essential to the narrative. Dovid is left along to wrestle with the changes in his home and his synagogue as he is the expected successor to the departed Rav.

Rachel Weisz serves as a producer having optioned the book of Naomi Alderman. Her performance is  energetic but occupies one beat of defiance until she is in her fathers home seeing how he lived at the end shows her vulnerability. The central performance here is that of Rachel McAdams as Esti. She stayed behind, takes her teaching and religious cannons seriously but knows there has been a large hole since Ronit fled town all of those years ago. The most surprising performer is Alessandro Nivola as Dovid. He was the top student of the departed Rav Krushka, best friends of both the women and feels the pressure to do the right thing by his wife and for the community. He's also the one that extends the first kind words to Ronit when she turns up at the reception for her father.  Eventually his actions he takes in all of these areas are very unexpected.

In the end as introduced with the opening prelude Disobedience is a film that brings to a head the struggle between religious order and tradition on one side and freedom and free will on the other.  Lelio continues his trend of brining characters to the screen that the viewer quickly feels a vested interest in their well being. Here Dovid, Esti and Ronit have a very complicated relationship  that's well worth the watch.

**** Out of 4.

Disobedience | Sebastian Lelio | USA/UK/Ireland | 2017 | 114 Minutes.

Tags:  Photographer, Orthodox, Rabbi, Shabbat Dinner, Sermon, Teacher, Yeshiva, Judgement, Piety, Frum, Candle Sticks,