The Jewry maybe out, but DISOBEDIENCE is guilty of being an engaging, intimate story within an archaically cultural behemoth.
The sublimely effervescent Rachel Weisz plays photographer, Ronit, who returns from her life in New York to her roots East London after hearing of her father’s death.
Ronit’s dad was a Rav, a big wig in the Orthodox Jewish community, and was estranged from his daughter. Indeed, he had disinherited her for turning her back on her religion.
The community is shocked and stunned when the shunned shiksa shows up without sheitel, and starts to schmooze with an old girlfriend, Esti, now married to the deceased rabbi’s leading disciple and heir apparent, Dovid.
Esti is a gay woman who is in a loving heterosexual marriage. In her religion, homosexuality is considered a sin, but she believes in God so she’s trying to do the right thing by her marriage. She is in a lot of psychological pain because of this decision and Ronit’s return releases all her desire to be free.
At the same time, she doesn’t view her life as a prison because she loves Dovid as a dear friend. It’s a really complicated role and Rachel McAdams brings a sense of Esti’s inner torture and suffering, the grief and stress of the situation, the ties of tradition and the transformational power of progression.
Dovid is an innately conservative and spiritual man, but decent, morally good man. Even though the community is warning him about the trouble Ronit could bring, he knows she is mourning her father and should be involved.
When his decency is tested in a very serious way, he discovers an existential spirituality outside any given doctrine, and Alessandro Nivola encompasses the sense of righteousness balanced by a genuine love of his wife.
Based on Naomi Alderman’s 2006 award-winning novel of the same name, the splendid screenplay for DISOBEDIENCE comes from Rebecca Lenkiewicz co-wrote the film Ida with director Pawel Pawlikowski which won the Oscar in 2016 for Best Foreign Language Film.
Director Sebastian Lelio made this year’s Oscar winning A Fantastic Woman. Here he brings the story of two fantastic women played by two fantastic women.
Frum tradition to taboo, DISOBEDIENCE punishes and rewards.
