Danielle (Rachel Sennott) is a twenty-something Jewish woman who is trying to figure out what she wants to do in life, professionally, sexually, romantically… She has a lot on her plate.
Her hazy goals become festering wounds when she joins her family at a shiva event for a departed relative.
Also at the event are her ex-girlfriend Maya (Molly Gordon) and her current sugar daddy Max (Danny Deferrari). Further complications arise when she learns that Max has a wife (Dianna Agron) and child.
Shiva Baby is one of the best movies I have seen this year.
Granted, it came out a couple of years ago. But it is still worth hoisting up.
A paranoid suspense film, Shiva Baby is hilarious but nerve-shredding.
The filmmakers have taken Hitchcock’s metaphor about suspense - tell the audience there is a bomb under the table and let the scene play out - and turned it into a film.
This is a movie about being watched, and about maintaining a public front.
Danielle spends the movie under constant surveillance and interrogation - no one understands her and is only interested in fitting her into their preconceptions of who they think she is (or should be).
The film does a great job of putting the viewer in Danielle’s position.
She is never alone - other characters fill the background of the frame, the soundscape is polluted with gossip about her, and the camera follows Danielle like another voyeur.
The baby cries constantly, adding another element of anxiety to the film’s atmosphere (apparently, this was an accident - the filmmakers had to rewrite the film to account for the baby’s crying).
I first caught lead player Rachel Sennott in the webseries she co-starred in with Ayo Edebiri (Iconography, The Bear). After Bodies Bodies Bodies, she has gained more profile - and will hopefully lead to more eyes on this gem.
She is fantastic here. She manages to embody a listlessness and longing with stillness. There is a constant sense of tension underpinning her performance which gives the movie a pathos.
The film is very funny, but it is never mean-spirited. Danielle is never the butt of the joke, and the world she is stuck in is one of ignorance and self-absorption, rather than cruel.
It is such a tight, focused, interior movie. A deft, human comedy.
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