Rachel’s disobedience could pay dividends
Rachel Weisz’s new film, Disobedience, is set a few stops up the Northern line from where she grew up. The picture, adapted from Naomi alderman’s 2006 debut novel, is based in the closed-off Orthodox Jewish community in hendon, North london. Weisz (pictured left) plays Ronit, a woman who disentangled herself from the suffocating embrace of her strict upbringing to make her own choices in New York, where she has become conversant in the art of the wisecrack. When her father, a respected rabbi, dies she returns to the streets of her childhood and rekindles a forbidden relationship with esti (Rachel Mcadams) who’s now married to her father’s successor Dovid (alessandro Nivola). Weisz, who is also a producer of the film directed by sebastian lelio, told me she really wanted to tell a story where she played opposite a woman. ‘i love the fact that it’s contemporary,’ she noted, yet it’s set in a world Ronit calls ‘medieval’. ‘it’s just a few stops up the Northern line from where i grew up — and people are living in a community where to be gay is taboo,’ Weisz said. ‘You cannot stay in that community and be a gay man or a gay woman. ‘i thought the juxtaposition of modernity and this old, deeply traditional world would create a very interesting drama.’ it’s a gripping picture that is still respectful of the beliefs and spirituality of a community ‘where neighbours will help you out’. ‘But if you’re not heterosexual, you can’t be there,’ Weisz added. she said it’s an ‘impossible conundrum’ for esti: a teacher who wants both. ‘she wants to be who she really is, and she wants her faith. But you can’t have both there,’ she told me over the telephone from Manhattan, where she lives with husband Daniel craig and their baby daughter. The actress praised director lelio’s ‘female gaze’. she said she couldn’t believe ‘that a straight man’ had directed the south american film Gloria (which lelio also wrote, with Gonzalo Maza). The title character was a middle-aged woman ‘who would normally play the granny or the auntie who has five lines’.
it was lelio who chose to shoot the intimate moments between Ronit and esti discreetly. ‘sebastian wanted the scene to be focused on their faces. Besides being very romantic and emotional and passionate, it gives esti the courage to come out,’ Weisz said.
‘sebastian’s choice means the audience have to imagine what’s happening outside of the frame. To me, it’s more erotic when you have to imagine it.’
it’s a beautifully realised original movie with three sublime performances at the heart. Weisz produced the film through her own production company and has others in the pipeline.
Weisz, Mcadams and Nivola all scored acting nominations in the British independent Film awards, which are being held in london on sunday.
in the best actress category, Weisz is up against Gemma arterton (for escape), Jessie Buckley (Beast), Olivia colman (The Favourite) and Maxine Peake (Funny cow).
She’s also nominated in the supporting actress section for her scalding portrait of lady sarah churchill in The Favourite — co-star emma stone is recognised, too, as is Mcadams, for Disobedience.
in all, Weisz has three BiFa nominations (the third is for Best Picture): a record for an actor.
she adored making director Yorgos lanthimos’s The Favourite, in which she plays confidante to Olivia colman’s Queen anne, despite knowing nothing about churchill, nor the monarch, beforehand.
‘i knew about Queen anne houses, and furniture — long windows! — and that’s about it,’ Weisz admitted.
The film, which has been generating a lot of awards season heat, opens here on New Year’s Day.