Shivas are inherently awkward: social gatherings for the newly dead, ostensibly sad, but social gatherings nevertheless. Before and after prayers you pass on your condolences, make small-talk with people you often haven’t seen in years and possibly haven’t wanted to, and eat. In another film a shiva might occupy a scene or two but here it’s a good 70 minutes, more-or-less in real time. Director Emma Seligman runs with it, digging into the awkwardness with relish.
Danielle (Sennott) is lost on the cusp of change, not quite sure of what or who she is. At the shiva her lack of direction becomes cruelly magnified as she is relentlessly pecked at by overbearing well-wishers asking questions, offering advice and judging her, unwittingly or otherwise. Her ex-girlfriend (Molly Gordon) is there. And then walks in her sugar daddy Max (Deferrari), whom she’d earlier had sex with. And then she discovers he’s married. And then she discovers he has a baby. They turn up, too. It’s not a healthy situation. After that, more and more chaos crashes in and this Nice Jewish Girl™ finds her respectable façade at risk of destruction. Hemmed into the house by people and convention, her day becomes a nightmare.
This is a fantastic and very funny exercise in tension.
Shiva Baby isn’t autobiographical but it is inspired by Seligman’s experiences as a bisexual Jew who, some years ago, went through a terrible time and, briefly, tried her hand at sugaring. As such, via her grounded screenplay, the understated camerawork and naturalistic performances, the film rings true while also playing with genre: it’s a tonal tightrope mixing up drama, farce and horror, albeit of a very domestic kind. With Danielle’s mental state teetering, Seligman sticks with her throughout, seeing everything through her fragile perspective. Good people become grotesques, leering and laughing. The house becomes a sort of ghost train, with perfectly innocent folk appearing from nowhere, blocking escape routes as Ariel Marx’s discordant, unsettling score — like Penderecki doing klezmer — ratchets up, strings picked and plucked and screeched like nails on a blackboard.
And in the eye of the storm is Sennott, a true revelation who has comedy flowing through her but plays it for real. There’s barely a frame where she doesn’t look horribly uncomfortable. Her performance and the film itself are incredible studies of insecurity and anxiety. Shiva Baby absolutely rattles along, the stakes increasing as it goes, like an elastic band being slowly stretched. Eventually, you know it’s going to snap. When it does, it maybe snaps too hard — a lot goes on at this shiva — yet even then, the emotion carries it through, the high drama balanced out by the heart, all in service of what Seligman has to say about this acute identity crisis. This is a fantastic and very funny exercise in tension, but also a hugely compassionate exploration of a young woman on the verge of falling apart. It’s as comforting as it is cringey.
