CinemaClown
A tale of forbidden love in a society secluded by religion, Disobedience explores the boundaries of faith & sexuality through two women who conduct a passionate affair after being reunited by a tragedy, and the film benefits a lot from Sebastián Lelio's concise direction and a sparkling chemistry between its leading ladies.The story of Disobedience follows a woman who, after learning about the news of her father's death, revisits her Orthodox Jewish community that shunned her for a transgression many years ago where she reunites with her childhood friend. But as days pass, their passions reignite and they begin their secret romance once again.Co-written & directed by Sebastián Lelio (known for A Fantastic Woman & Gloria), there is tension in the air evident from the moment our exiled protagonist returns to her residence and it only magnifies when her old flame comes into the picture. Lelio approaches the subject with patience but he still ends up hitting a few snags.Disobedience is tense & gripping whenever the screen is shared by the two Rachels and quite a chore when it isn't. You can actually sense a history between them from the moment they are in the same room and it only gets more riveting from that point onwards. But dialogues isn't its strongest suit, and the slow pace doesn't help either.What binds it together, however, is the sizzling chemistry between Rachel Weisz & Rachel McAdams as both actresses challenge & uplift each other's performances, and share a bond that has a genuine depth & weight to it. Alessandro Nivola is just as committed to his role but he is easily overshadowed by the combined strength of two Rachels.On an overall scale, Disobedience is a well directed, finely scripted & strongly acted examination of love, faith, sexuality & freedom that won't appease all. Inclining more towards arthouse cinema than mainstream entertainment, the film is going to be rich & rewarding for some while others may find its glacially moving plot a little tedious & infuriating. Still, it's worth a shot for Weisz & McAdams' intense & passionate sexual chemistry alone.
juanmuscle
I really enjoyed this tale. I learnt a lot about a different religion, it was nice and thoughtful, they are a tight nit group who really care about each other. Although no matter how hard we try to lead a perfect life, no matter how much attention we put to every single detail, no matter how we calculate and keep a vigil on the precarious unforeseen, all our contingency plans are but a makeshift band-aid in the face the calamatous unruly heart. This was extremely well-written, there is no doubt about that, the way it unfolded is exactly how a natural thread in the living world might unfold, there was nothing forced or strained nor did the plot yank or pull us one way or anything forced! It all felt so comfortable and yet against the backdrop of the orthodox movement we also felt for everyone involved. So many different perspectives gave life to the plot added to the theme and bolstered the undercurrents, but it also left so much room for the element of mystery, once our hearts began to sink, boom! Hope loomed over the terrible pall, once our hearts felt fettered, boom! Freedom loomed over to sweep us away in a flurry of possibilities. Excellent script! 'May you live a long life' this powerful thoughtful well-intention phrase was being thrown about throughout the tale as if one might say Hallo anywhere else to perhaps our neighbors, but when the two ladies said to each other at the end, charged with so much backstory, it really moved us to look at the phrase word for word and really experience its genuine true meaning of hope rich and full teeming with glory as if said from the soul, 'May you have a long life full of truth and love and joy and hope and vision and everything that is going to make it a life worth living, and perhaps I can be in it?' It was really darling, excellent piece of film making!
lavatch
"Disobedience" would have had a better title in "Secrets and Lies." It was wasn't that the characters Ronit Krushka (Rachel Weisz) and Esti Kuperman (Rachel McAdams) were disobeying their God in their lesbian relationship. Rather, all the evidence points to their repressed community that resulted in their stultifying and tortured lives.If there is any character who is central to the lives of Ronit, Esti, and the kindly young rabbi Dovid Kuperman, it is the elderly Rav Shlomo Krushka, who hovers over them all, even after his death. At one critical point in the past, the Rav had caught Ronit and Esti in flagrante dilecto, resulting in Ronit fleeing to New York and Esti trying to "straighten up and flight right" by marrying Dovid. The film has a symmetry in the final words of Rav speaking to his synagogue about Hashem creating the angels, beasts, and the humans after six days of hard labor that are finally analyzed at the end of the film by Dovid. The gist of the argument is that the angels and beasts are naturally disposed to obedience, while human beings have free will. We never learn the Rav's feelings about what it means to have free will. Rather, it takes two hours of this laboriously paced movie for Dovid to finally understand the "tangled life" of the love triangle in which he lives.This was a muddied film with good intentions, but poor execution. The symbols were much overused, such as the wig denoting Esti's straight-jacketed existence, the teaching of the "Othello" love triangle of Othello-Desdemona-Iago by Esti to her young students, the smoking of cigarettes to denote rebelliousness, and the euphemism "May you live a long life" as a brush-off line were all overused and heavy-handed. Above all, there were far too many false endings, including a prospective suicide attempt, a trip to the airport that ends in a turnaround after check-in, and a smarmy embrace of the threesome that denotes forgiveness. The bottom drops out of this film around the midpoint, and it never recovers.
eddieknox95
McAdams and Weisz are exceptional in these roles. The introduction of their forbidden romance is neither overly drawn out in a lazy attempt to create tension, nor is it rushed. The whole film delicately and expertly balances spine-tingling chemistry and heart-wrenching moments.Reviews that claim the film to be slow are perhaps written by those with little patience, or watching only for the love scene. Recommend watching when in a calm headspace with heaps of time to dedicate to these superb performances. It's refreshing to see a film with two queer female leads unfetishized and end with a promise of happiness.
AD
