As someone who is not of the Jewish faith, I don’t know if shivas are usually as nerve-racking, awkward and immensely painful as the one that takes place in the new movie Shiva Baby. Some wild shit goes down when a young woman named Danielle (Rachel Sennott) attends a shiva — that is, a period of traditional mourning for a lost loved one — with her parents (Polly Draper and Fred Melamed).
It’s bad enough ol’ girl has trouble remembering who exactly is the person she and her fam are supposed to be mourning. But Danielle is soon greeted at this somber get-together by two distractions: her ex-girlfriend (Molly Gordon) and the man (Danny Deferrari) Danielle occasionally has sex with for money. Oh, and let’s not forget about the man’s entrepreneur wife (former Glee star Dianna Agron, bringing the savvy shiksa heat), who comes to the shiva with the couple’s baby (whom Danielle also didn’t know about) in tow.
Clocking in at an hour and 17 minutes, Shiva Baby is a quick exercise in anxiety and self-loathing. Canadian writer-director Emma Seligman takes an already awkward gathering and throws some juicy, salacious monkey wrenches into the mix (complete with a downright nerve-jangling string score from Ariel Marx). This is actually a full-length adaptation of a seven-and-a-half-minute short Seligman did a couple years back that just scratched the surface of the quiet, claustrophobic hysteria that transpires in this film.
Seligman definitely has a silently unraveling muse in Sennott, who also starred in the short and serves as an executive producer. She plays Danielle as a gal who tries to be liberated, but finds herself losing all semblance of self when she’s around her family and friends — many of them constantly urging her to eat something. She secretes panic. At practically every moment, Danielle is lying to others (and herself) about who she is and who she wants to be. She’s mostly trying to rebel against the good-Jewish-girl persona that her mom — Draper, of Thirtysomething fame, is a kvetching delight in this — so wants her to present, despite the fact that Danielle fails miserably at it. She wants to be a dominant, complicated sexual being, the kind of person who could make both men and women desire her intensely. But ultimately, Danielle is a confused young woman with hopelessly stringy hair who’s in way over her head.
If anything, Shiva Baby has Seligman showing us how a situation that could easily be played for laughs can also be downright nightmarish. The movie is funny, mostly thanks to the supporting players who throw passive-aggressive niceties at Danielle and her clan. (Shout-out to the ever-reliable Jackie Hoffman for bringing that hilarious yenta noise.) But it is effective in giving us a portrait of a Jewish girl who is relentlessly on edge when she’s forced (in rather close quarters, mind you) to come to terms with how much she’s basically fucking up her life — and the lives of others.
By the time we get to the cringey, chuckle-worthy finale, which once again forces our characters to convene in a compact setting, Shiva Baby presents a view of Jewish culture that is both amusing and unnerving. Seligman seems to be saying that when you’re one of the Chosen People, you’re immersed in one big clusterfuck of a community. My takeaway: When it comes right down to it, Jewish families aren’t that different from every other family on the planet. And if there are any Jewish people out there who don’t believe me, go to a cookout with Black folks. You’ll find we’re not that dissimilar after all!
