Two Rachels on top form in tale of forbidden fruit
Disobedience begins with a rabbi’s sermon about free choice, and will go on to test, with the two Rachels on top form, how far ultraorthodox Judaism truly allows it.
The rabbi, Rav Krushka (Anton Lesser), collapses in front of his Hendon congregation, setting a chain of events in motion which will bring his daughter, the bisexual Ronit (Rachel Weisz), back from self-imposed exile in New York to attend his funeral.
An air of disgrace and scandal obscurely clouds her, though we aren’t immediately sure why: she has had no contact with any of her London network in years, and many are surprised she has even made it, including Dovid (Alessandro Nivola), protégé and surrogate son of Rav.
Ronit is the rabbi’s sole blood relative, but is made to feel like an outcast and a foreigner, subject to shady glances and many a blithe mention of how cosmopolitan she looks, in comparison to the devout or “frum” appearance of the other women present, with their tidy brown wigs and demure compliance. It comes as a dull surprise to her that she’s even been cut out of her father’s will in favour of the synagogue.
Weisz is powerfully good in this role, wary and contained, like a quiver full of arrows she could easily let fly, but chooses not to. Or mostly does. Patronised at dinner about her unmarried status, she fires back at the offending wife, who is surely punishing her out of some obscure personal unhappiness. Earlier, Ronit has teased Dovid about which among the many identikit frum women available in this orbit is his own spouse. To her considerable shock, it is Esti (Rachel Mcadams), who is no longer, on any level, the Esti she used to know.
Further details about the past – and future – between these two will need to be discovered on screen, because the script, sharply adapted by Rebecca Lenkiewicz from Naomi Alderman’s novel, parcels them out with hushed rigour, tiptoeing nervily towards the nub of the matter. They have been lovers and, yes, will be again, but the film renders this a behind-closed-doors secret, barely even discussed between the two of them, darkly insinuated by everyone else. The notoriety of one sex scene – in which one spits in the other’s mouth – is already in danger of pulling too much prurient focus, in a story that’s so pointedly about forbidden fruit and institutional disapproval.
Given that he’s neither Jewish nor British, gay nor female, Chilean director Sebastián Lelio (Gloria, A Fantastic Woman) does a bang-up job with both the community portrait and the clenched, desperate love story here. Religious dogma hovers like an iron rod over most of these lives, but the characters wriggle credibly beneath it, and not just the women: Dovid, in Nivola’s pained interpretation, has a lot of thinking to do about how much he’s willing to stifle his own wife’s independence in the name of patriarchal custom.
The heavy lifting, especially from halfway, increasingly falls to Mcadams, in one of her best performances. She makes Esti’s evident depression and the deal she has struck feel like two sides of the same coin. We watch her pace wretchedly about in her chosen cage, guiltily eyeing the exit.
The third act gets a little pushy – the resolution of all these conflicts during a public ceremony is too much of a dramatist’s default move to be entirely persuasive. But the aura of constriction in the rest of the film is impressively palpable without being overprogrammed. You come out gulping for fresh air, gagging for freedom, as surely as the characters.