arts&life

AGATHA A. NITECKA / BLEECKER STREET

film

Disobedience

Orthodox lovers shake things up.

DANIELLE BERRIN JEWISH JOURNAL OF GREATER L.A.

44

May 10 • 2018

jn

BLEECKER STREET

S

teamy lesbian sex. That explains
part of the buzz behind the
new film Disobedience, in which
Rachel Weisz and Rachel McAdams
play lovers reunited after many years.
Such a display has generated interest
in a film before, but it might be the first
time it has been depicted within the
Orthodox Jewish community. It’s almost
certainly the first time the women get-
ting it on are named “Ronit” and “Esti,”
the latter of whom wears a sheitel — a
wig worn by Orthodox wives.
Based on the 2006 novel by Naomi
Alderman, Disobedience, which opens
in Metro Detroit May 11, follows Ronit
Krushka (Weisz), who returns to the
community that she left in order to
bury her estranged father, a revered
rabbi. Although she is regarded by
many as unwelcome, she is warmly
received by childhood friends Dovid,
her father’s protege, and his wife, Esti
(McAdams), with whom she once had
a romantic relationship. The discov-
ery of their forbidden tryst savaged
Ronit’s relationship with her father
and prompted her exit from Orthodox
life. When the women reunite after

“One of the main ideas of the film is that
there’s nothing more spiritual than the
power to disobey.”

— SEBASTIÁN LELIO

TOP: Rachel Weisz and Rachel McAdams in Disobedience.
ABOVE: Alessandro Nivola plays Dovid Kuperman.

many years, a long-buried conflict is
renewed.
The film is directed by Chilean-born
Sebastián Lelio of 2017’s A Fantastic
Woman, which won this year’s foreign-
language film Oscar. That film, about a
young transgender woman ostracized
and abused after the death of her part-
ner, hints at the director’s preference
for characters that exist outside social
norms.
“I love the idea of people who are
willing to pay the price to be who
they really are, [especially] against a
backdrop that can have an oppressive
aspect,” Lelio, 44, said during a recent
phone interview.
Hot lesbian sex aside, Disobedience is
as much about the tensions implicit in
religious life — between belonging and
freedom, desire and fidelity, tradition
and modernity — as it is a love story.
The subtext of the film explores the
standards required for membership in
the group and the costs of leaving.
Since Lelio is not Jewish (“Not that
I’m aware of,” he joked), he said that
growing up in a Catholic country
taught him about the powerful cultural