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.

Set in modern-day London, The movie starts with Rav Krushka (Anton Lesser), the most highly ranked Rabbi in his community, giving a sermon about angels, beasts, and humans who have “free will to make decisions.” And while giving this speech, he keels over and dies. It sets the tone for a movie. Even if we don’t know what this movie will be about, we know this initial scene will impact. We then transition to New York City, where we meet a photographer named Ronnie (Rachel Weisz – The Constant Gardner, The Fountain), the only child of Rav Krushka. We learn that she left London after having being caught in a same-sex relationship with Esti (Rachel McAdams – The Notebook, Midnight in Paris) when they were adolescents (it isn’t specifically stated as to when, but from what I gathered is that they are reconnecting for the first time some 10-15 years after that relationship became public…and we aren’t really given the specific intimate details of that relationship…we just know that it was physical). And in this conservative Jewish Orthodox community, anyone who breaks away from this norm is seen as an outcast. They don’t behave in the way that society expects them to behave. But what if the actions that define them as disobedient are the only path that will allow them to live a happy and positive life? Ronnie leaves after the incident with Esti is learned about and has never returned. We can safely assume it has been somewhere between 15-20 years. After learning of her father’s death, Ronnie processes the death by getting drunk, having random sex in the bathroom of a bar, and ice skating, before settling down and trying to figure out what she will do.

What she does is return home to her native home, a northern suburb of London called Herndon. Her presence is not received well, and it’s a surprise that she is there at all. Most people have no idea how to reach her, let alone the desire to contact her about the father of her father. Rav Krushka’s death is not just another death. The entire community feels it; thus, they feel overly committed to his funeral proceedings going honorably. Ronnie has no mother (I don’t believe we ever learn what happened to her), and she has no siblings. It is just her and her father. But, as she will read in his obituary, Rav Krushka has basically disowned his daughter for engaging in a same-sex relationship…so much so that the obituary says he has no children. And he has completely written Ronnie out of his will.

We learn that before, and probably even during the sexual relationship between Ronnie and Etsi, the two of them and Dovid Kuperman (Alessandro Nivola – You Were Never Really Here, A Most Violent Year) where the best of friends. Dovid, who is cousins with Ronnie, lukewarmly welcomes her when she shows up at his doorstep. Dovid is seen as the heir apparent to Rav Krushka. You can imagine his conflicting emotions here (trying to accept a best friend and cousins from his younger years while still understanding the societal norms and how her father would have viewed the situation). It’s tense at best (as an aside, I’m not sure I’ve ever known who was Nivola is, but after looking at his filmography, he’s been in several movies I like…still I found myself constantly imagining what this movie might have been like with Michael Fassbender playing the lead). But Nivola does a fine job here, opening his home to his cousin and letting him know of his wife…Esti. Yes, Etsi. I actually think at this point in the movie that we don’t really know the backstory between the characters in terms of the movie’s unfolding. But we certainly do by watching the trailer even one time. It brings up an interesting situation that many of us might find ourselves in. It almost becomes the question of the day. What do we have the ex of our current lover shows up at our doorsteps after years of being away? Do we welcome her? Do we try to distance her from our current partner? Do we have enough trust in our partner and the relationship developed with her that it doesn’t matter one way or another? Is it different when a partner once had a same-sex relationship with this person, and maybe you’re uncertain if that desire has ever fully being extinguished? There is a lot to unpack here, for sure.

Etsi is distant with Ronnie for sure. We aren’t certain exactly why she left or why she and Etsi have not connected in any fashion since their relationship was discovered. Obviously, there is extreme hurt on Etsi’s part and that she’s either denying or so far over it that she’s unwilling to give Ronnie more than just the time of the day. But in this community,  the men of the family make the decisions, and Dovid decides Ronnie can stay in the guest room. At best, the situation is tense, and Dovid puts a lot of faith in his wife that whatever was between her and Ronnie is over. And, of course, we are only in the first third of the movie, and there is plenty that will unfold over the next week while those close to Rav Krushka mourn his death and members of the community prepare for Dovid to take on that new role. Everybody is leary of Ronnie, many wishing she would go back to New York. But there are issues beyond her father that need to be addressed before that can happen.

***Spoilers and Questions***

Before I get into the spoilers, I will say that the dynamics between the three leads are fantastic. Nobody is really sure of each other. We don’t know if what is portrayed on the screen is what the characters are feeling or masking much more. Weisz is clearly the lead here, but it is McAdams who steals the show. Something is lurking about her from the onset of the movie. And her pain becomes more and more apparent as the movie progresses. Whereas Ronnie has moved on from her relationship with Etsi, Etsi clearly has not. And as the week progresses, it is only a matter of time before Ronnie and Etsi gets at the heart of the issue. But the way that McAdams goes about playing Etsi might be her best performance since The Notebook. She is so submissive when we first meet her, but as she reconnects with Ronnie and sees that she hasn’t changed much and is the person she fell for many years ago, there is no denying her want and need for this woman. It is heartbreaking when Etsi tells Ronnie that she doesn’t and has never loved Dovid the way he loves her. I didn’t know of the tradition of weekly Friday sex between husband and wife in this culture, and this movie is graphic enough to show that she can achieve orgasm with Dovid, but their relationship is not what she wants. Rather, it was just what was expected of her to do.

But when Ronnie reenters her life, all of those feelings that all of us have experienced when we have loved and lost and reconnected come rushing back, and she becomes a completely different person. Etsi passionately wants to reconnect with Ronnie, and it’s just a matter of time before they do, but she does have a husband who maybe she doesn’t fancy in a sexual fashion, but one who is a good man who cares for her and loves her the way that any person would want to be loved. So she’s in this constant torment. And, just by watching the trailer, you know that the two-act on their desires, but only after a meaningful conversation about love, sexuality, and faith. And Leilo doesn’t hold back when showing the sex scenes between the two women. Watching this movie reminded me of Blue is the Warmest Color meets Call Me By Your Name meets Take This Waltz, all fine and memorable films. The lesbian sex scenes in Blue is the Warmest Color are like nothing I had ever really seen on a mainstream film before. Those scenes were hot and erotic, and were the filming of them was highly controversial because of what the director of that movie asked them to do. Contrast that with Call Me By Your Name, a  very passive and tame movie portraying same-sex attraction. And then Take This Waltz which shows an unsatisfied and brilliant Michelle Williams wanting to engage in an affair with a neighbor she is highly attracted to, but who tortures herself with guilt because she doesn’t want to hurt her husband (Seth Rogen in his finest film to date). In Disobedience, we needed the sex scenes to show how sensual and sexual these two women found each other. And, of course, after acting on their desires, there is the guilt, the regret, and the confusion, almost all expressed by Etsi. In fact, for a while, I was uncertain if Ronnie was reconnecting with the love of her life or if this was just another fling. It certainly wasn’t for Etsi, who we can safely assume based on a conversation with Ronnie that she had only had two sexual partners in her life (Ronnie and Dovid). But the final quarter of this movie felt a little weird for me. And I’ll explain below in my questions.

Usually, I have a spoilers section, but I also have some questions about this particular movie. The first is why Ronnie is completely ostracized whereas Esti is not? Is it because Ronnie fled while Esti stayed to be “rehabilitated”? Did Esti suffer enough “punishment” where she has been forgiven? Was it because Ronnie was the daughter of a highly ranked Rabbi, whereas Esti was not? Was it because Ronnie was older, and some might think that she seduced Esti into the act? I don’t believe we are given the ages of the women in the film, but Weisz is seven years older than McAdams in real life. Finally, it was never really answered why Ronnie is unwelcomed, whereas Esti is. Still, the most logical conclusion is that Ronnie left the community after the relationship was discovered and never returned.

We also learn that Esti has a mental disorder. Whether she is messed up from the incident with Ronnie (probably), whether it is something else, or whether it is a combination of a variety of different things, we learn that Esti isn’t whole in the mind. But much like Tully, the last movie I reviewed before Disobedience, this discovery is almost an afterthought, and it shouldn’t be. In both movies, the issue of mental health (in both cases, it seems to be a case of depression) is brought up way too late in the story, and, in both movies, it is not followed after it is eluded to upon. Now I am aware that both of these movies were based on novels and that a novel has much more time to develop storylines and characters than a movie does, so in both cases, I’m going to give the novel the benefit of the doubt that these issues are more on the front burner. However, I can never be certain unless I read each one (and maybe I will). In Tully, the reveal (while weak) was necessary for the story’s conclusion. With Disobedience, it was not. We know that Esti is not whole, but it could be because she is a lesbian who denies herself by living in a passionless relationship. I would have liked to see more how the mental illness of Etsi came into play. But I will not take that away from the direction of the screenplay as I did with Tully. And the reason being is that it was a part of Etsi’s character, but maybe not as big of a part as Tully’s. Likewise, I understand the constraints of adapting a novel for film. And Leilo was very purposeful and direct while adhering to the minutes he had for this movie. I would have liked to learn more about what was happening between some of the scenes in this movie, but I understand that that was not always possible. So the advances of his characters from scene to scene were something that I understood. I understood his pacing. I understood what he was trying to do and how he was unveiling that. So in some sense, I wondered, at times, why even bring in Etsi’s mental health at all. Was it truly needed? Did it advance the story, or would it have been hindered if it had not been brought up? Couldn’t it just be what (I would assume) would be the case with a gay person not fulfilling her sexual desires by being in a heterosexual relationship? For me, that was enough.

Alluding back to the final quarter of the movie, that felt weird for me. It was all about Etsi coming to terms and requesting her freedom from Dovid after learning she had become pregnant. And he granted her that. So I assumed that she would get back with Ronnie, the love of her life. I envisioned them going back to New York City, where they would live their lifestyle without the same scrutiny of the small conservative town in London. And while we were heading down that track, that plan went off the rails, and we don’t really know why. Was it not love? Was Etsi getting her freedom doesn’t mean going back to a relationship where she didn’t have freedom? Was it her saying she needed to figure out things on her own, and maybe that would include Ronnie, but maybe it wouldn’t. But after their reconnect and their reveal to Dovid, anything outside of Ronnie and Etsi getting back together seemed off-kilter. And the final 15 minutes had more false finishes than a WWE pay-per-view main event match. By this, I mean, just when you thought something would happen, the trajectory changed. And it didn’t always make sense to me, and I’m not sure I had to have a same-sex attraction to feel that way. But honestly, I don’t know. From the outset, you know that Disobedience wasn’t going to be the feel-good movie of the year, but was the ending satisfying? I don’t know. I do need to watch it again.

***End of Spoilers and questions***

I read something recently that said that a far greater majority of novels, television shows, and movies that revolve around gay characters end in suicide or death compared to similar situations between straight characters. That is disturbing. I appreciated this movie because, sorry if this is a spoiler, nobody dies here. This isn’t a thriller or a mystery. It’s a romantic drama where two of our best actresses to date deliver top-notch performances. It’s time, America (and the rest of this world), to wake up. It’s 2018. And while the one thing in this world that I’m certain of is that I am not gay and possess no same-sex attraction, I still can find myself envious of people in long-term same-sex relationships that are nurturing, loving, and bring happiness. What in this world is more important than that? I appreciate Leilo breaking this beautiful film to light and for casting the right leads in Weisz and McAdams

Plot 10/10
Character Development 9/10
Character Chemistry 9.5/10
Acting 9.5/10
Screenplay 8.5/10
Directing 8.5/10
Cinematography 9.5/10
Sound 9/10
Hook and Reel 10/10
Universal Relevance 10/10
93.5%