Tropic Sprockets by Ian Brockway:
Disobedience

Director Sebastian Lelio (A Fantastic Woman) is excellent in showing the bravery of rebellion. Here with “Disobedience” he takes on the Orthodox Jewish community, adapting the novel of the same name by Naomi Alderman. The film is tense, understated and winds around you with a building claustrophobia.

Ronit (Rachel Weisz) decides to return to her London home when she receives news that her father Rabbi Krushka (Anton Lesser) has passed away. As she is a non-practicing Jew in the insular community, her friend Dovid (Alessandro Nivola) gives her the cold shoulder. Then Esti (Rachel McAdams) enters as Dovid’s wife and it is slowly revealed that Ronit and Esti were once enamored with each other. The wonder of this film is that it engages, yet nothing is revealed quickly nor is predictable. The audience is a fly on the wall of sorts, watching the proceedings unfolding with a subtlety that is deceptive.

Dovid rules with an iron hand. The strength shows in his face and he is all the more intimidating by his crushing silence. By contrast, Ronit and Esti spark and smolder making an engine of flesh, churning and spinning, their carnal energy a crime no longer secret. The pair take refuge in the subway, a place both public and private, away from Orthodox eyes which are placed everywhere.

Elements of the film echo Highsmith or Philip Roth in a tone of apprehension. Dovid is a Kafka character. In one scene, he appears almost as a fixed and stationary head, bogged down by the weight of books. Though the two women have to look over their shoulder constantly throughout, both are the only ones truly free. Dovid is shown frequently confined by either windows or doors.

“Disobedience” is not a film that ignites or explodes, but it is all the more potent for showing all as is, no more, no less. The director’s dramatic restraint, far from a shortcoming reveals his excellence. Lelio remains a meticulous explorer of the human condition, showing women as beings of spirit and independence with the will to either stay insulated or be unleashed upon the world.

Write Ian at [email protected]

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