Reunited: Esti (Rachel McAdams, left) and Ronit (Rachel Weisz).
Disobedience — the latest film from Chilean director Sebastián Lelio, who won an Oscar this year for A Fantastic Woman — unfolds almost as a mystery.
We begin in an Orthodox temple in London, where a rabbi is giving what is to become his final sermon, examining the idea of free will. He collapses and someone calls for an ambulance.
It then cuts to a New York City photography studio where photographer Ronit Krushka (Rachel Weisz) is taking shots of a man covered in Christian-themed tattoos (“Jesus really hurt,” he says). Ronit is called away to receive a phone call, and wanders dazed through the streets of New York, and then into a bar, where she hooks up in a bathroom with a stranger.
Before long, she is on a plane, and after it touches down in London, we finally get to put some pieces of the puzzle together; she’s the daughter of the rabbi.
The tension mounts as Ronit arrives at the house of the rabbi’s apparent successor, Dovid Kuperman (Allesandro Nivola), who’s clearly ambivalent about her presence. And when she is shown to a guest room by Dovid’s wife, Esti (Rachel McAdams), the awkwardness reaches new heights. At Shabbat dinner, she asks the couple “Is it good being married to each other?” That’s a complicated question for an already-complicated couple.
Whenever Ronit shows up at the gatherings commemorating her father’s death, eyebrows are raised, and as the film’s tone tightens up from foreboding to hair-raising, we discover that she’s been estranged from her father and the tight-knit Orthodox community because she has a past with Esti. Esti seems to love her husband and her life, but Ronit’s presence has reawakened something she can’t suppress.
And the trouble continues. Esti and Ronit are discovered kissing, and it is duly reported by someone at the girls’ school where Esti teaches. As the week unfolds, ideas of choice and freedom are woven artfully throughout, as the three tragic figures try to navigate a path through the conflict.
As the free-spirited Ronit, Weisz is riveting. She was clearly wounded by the rejection of her father, and wants to honor him without disrespecting the community she grew up in. Similarly, McAdams is brimming with anguish and passion; her ambivalence toward Dovid is heartbreaking. “It’s always been like this,” she confesses. And as the unraveling Dovid, Nivola carries the heavy burden of trying to reconcile two seemingly irreconcilable truths.
Disobedience is no action movie. It’s got plenty of long, beautiful shots of Jewish rituals, some richly sensual scenes, and an innovative, edgy score. But if you’re up for a slow burn, and some magnificent acting, you’ll want to see it.
