Desire forced into the light
“Disobedience” explores personal faith, free will and forbidden love in a beautifully crafted tale that will make your heart ache, thanks to two standout leading performances and a great supporting one.
The film opens with Rav Krushka, the beloved leader of an Orthodox Jewish congregation in London, delivering a sermon about the tricky place human beings occupy in the world, torn between the forces of spiritual good and darkness, but provided by HaShem (God) with free will — i.e., “the power to disobey.”
When Krushka dies, word reaches his long-estranged daughter, a New York photographer named Ronit (Rachel Weisz), who rushes home. Her return is greeted with muted shock.
So utter has her exile been that she doesn’t know her two dearest childhood friends, Dovid (Alessandro Nivola) and Esti (Rachel McAdams) are now husband and wife.
When Dovid, a disciple of her father’s, invites Ronit to stay with them, the fuse is lit and desire — long repressed — explodes between the two women. Then, an indiscreet moment throws everyone’s lives into turmoil.
Director Sebastian Lelio finds symbolism in those smallest of things — a cigarette shared, the sheitel wigs worn by married women that connote duality, the contrast between light and shadow.
The camera moves in close to capture every nuance of movement and expression as Lelio draws brave and mesmerizing performances from Weisz as the anguished prodigal daughter Ronit and McAdams as Esti, whose torment is even more intense, just more deeply buried.
The kisses between the two Rachels exude tortured passion, their desperate, fumbling embraces steeped in melancholy.
As the third side of the triangle, Nivola’s performance is similarly impressive, a decent, learned man trapped between the opposite poles of duty and tradition, and conscience and love.
“Disobedience” never seeks to condemn the orthodoxy of faith or to offer any tired bromides. Rather, it speaks to the frailties of ordinary human beings riven by competing desires and convictions, giving us an ending that is unexpected, moving and powerful.