Soft, subtle, disciplined, loving, sad, purposeful, and real. Sebastián Lelio’s (A Fantastic Woman, Gloria) Disobedience is all of these things and more. But as well as it does most of these movies, there are a couple of things that it just doesn’t hit on. I’ll have a spoilers section for this film later in this review. First, I will say that the film is very well made, but it doesn’t leave feeling very emotional when it is over. At its base is this life story, but Lelio fails to draw us into it soon enough, and then when he does, it feels very uneven and leaves you uncertain of each of its lead characters’ decisions. Ultimately, it becomes a movie that lacks the poignancy it set out to achieve. But it does dig deep into an important and unfortunately controversial topic of yesterday, today, and tomorrow…that of same-sex attraction and same-sex relationships. It’s so unfortunate that, as a society, we have not fully embraced same-sex relationships yet. For whatever reason, it feels like too many people treat gays or bisexuals as lesser people, similarly to how African Americans were treated in this country until the 1960s (and many would say beyond that and even into today) or how people of Middle Eastern descent were treated in the early 2000s after the September 11, 2001 attacks. To hate someone or treat some as lesser than how you’d treat someone else because of race, color, gender, religion, or sexual orientation is absolutely ridiculous to me. I’m embarrassed for people who discriminate. And, particularly right now, I am slowly choosing to distance myself from people who have such extreme views against gays. I’ve written about it in other reviews. I write about it in my poetry. This is because I am so invested in watching really good movies, such as Disobedience, about the topic of same-sex attraction or homosexuality. And I applaud the due diligence that directors pay to make these movies worthwhile experiences.
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