Disobedience (2018)

For his first English language film, writer/director Sebastian Lelio's has made a very subtly powerful film. Instead of doing something more flashy to appeal to a western audience, he has crafted a quiet piece which he shoots in hushed colours which mask the intensity of the emotions of the characters. He builds his narrative slowly and lets it grow in strength as it progresses.

His lead, Ronit (Rachel Weisz), returns to her former community where we are slowly introduced to her and her native world as it unfolds around her. But as she gets more time with her former lover Esti (Rachel McAdams), both characters bloom into fuller relief.

Like his previous films, Gloria and A Fantastic Woman,  he focuses on the experience of women dealing with the limits men have put around them, a particular strength of his as a film maker. His female actors have often talked about his way of giving them a strong voice on film and both Weisz and McAdams have said so about this work. In the audience one certainly feels the strength of their performances.

Disobedience follows a fairly familiar queer film arc where there are a pair of lovers, restricted in their ability to fully be together, who choose different ways of dealing with those restrictions, one running towards freedom while unable to wholly separate themselves from their former world, while the other complies with the limits of the community and finds a way to make it work for them. Again, familiarly, the characters' relationship is tested by their differing priorities and choices. What makes this stand out from the more typical queer film is a combination of the powerful performances by the two leads and Lelio's rather gentle hand in telling their story. Does he sometimes stay a little too removed? I'm not sure I know the answer.

Like films before it such as Blue is the Warmest Colour, Disobedience tackles the problem of how to tell an authentic lesbian story with a combination of a male director and two (as far as I am aware) straight actors. For all the hype about the film's pivotal love scene, it is rather brief (especially when compared to Blue, but then what wouldn't be?) and instead strikingly intimate. Time will tell if Disobedience manages to overcome that specific challenge, but as a moment in film the scene is lovely and powerful. Perhaps I cannot judge its authenticity but I can certainly feel how I was affected by it. It feels designed to get inside the characters' pent up passion for each other as opposed to explicitly depicting their sex act. I felt more connected to what was motivating each character after the scene, more connected to who they were.

Nivola's Dovid is also a strong character, devoted and moral his being in the way is not about repression, it is about his attempt to do what is right. Another strong performance make this not a villain role as it could have been but the struggle of those not involved to make sense of what they cannot make sense of. And Lelio's approach at the climax is not to give him the power to grant freedom, but the grace to offer his reluctant blessing.

Disobedience is lovely and profound. It holds a space for reflection on numerous ideas at the same time without watering down the story that belongs to these women. It is a film to sit with and reflect on.

Disobedience
Starring: Rachel Weisz, Rachel McAdams, Alessandro Nivola
Director: Sebastian Lelio
Writers: Rebecca Lenkiewicz, Sebastian Lelio