Shiva Baby

Writer/director Emma Seligman

actress/producer Rachel Sennott

 

Seligman with Rachel Sennott

Seligman with ensemble cast

SHIVA BABY                       B                                                                                                     Canada  USA  (77 mi)  2020  ‘Scope  d: Emma Seligman

Seligman is a Canadian filmmaker raised in a Reform Ashkenazi Jewish community in Toronto, who contributed film reviews as a teenager to The Huffington Post before attending NYU Film School, where her short thesis film, Shiva Baby (2018) YouTube (7:40), starring the same actress, was expanded into her first feature film, kind of a Jewish Finnegan’s Wake, updated into a contemporary world of The Graduate (1967), while delving into the delirium of Darren Aronofsky.   Rachel Sennott stars as Danielle, a bisexual woman who has nearly graduated from college, with only unanswered questions about her future, accompanying her parents to a day-long shiva, a Jewish wake, revealing a series of awkward and embarrassing events that only draw attention to her own growing insecurities, accentuated by the unexpected presence of Maya (Molly Gordon), an old flame who is mischievously intriguing, and Max (Danny Deferrar), an older man she sees frequently for paid sexual encounters.  While some of the same dialogue exists in both versions, mixing elements of comedic farce with moments of unanticipated terror, the day worsens, becoming a nightmarish depiction of a traditional Jewish ritual featuring rapid-fire dialogue, painfully subversive Jewish humor, and outlandish confrontations regarding her own burgeoning sexuality, which remains clouded under cover of cultural orthodoxy, yet threatens to be exposed at any minute, with her hovering mother (Polly Draper) who never gives her the space she needs, continually jabbering in her ear not to do anything rash, perhaps most afraid her bisexuality may cause a scene, in other words, don’t embarrass the family, all playing out in real time as they help themselves to the buffet table.  While this is one of the more absurdly cinematic representations of American Judaism, many may be caught offguard by the aggressive unpleasantness of the experience, invoking a mocking tone of irreverence while mixing in a heavy dose of existential horror and dread, accentuated by the anxiety-ridden musical score of Ariel Marx and a sound design that heightens an impending sense of dread.  Inspired by the building of claustrophobia and tension in Cassavetes’ Opening Night (1977), especially the effect it had upon Gena Rowlands, yet also Gia Coppola’s Palo Alto (2013), with Seligman indicating “I’ve never seen a film so accurately portray the suffocating and debilitating nature of young female insecurities.”  Using that as a guideline, her mantra for making this film was written on her desk, “I want other young women to feel heard in their insecurities that have been inflicted upon them.”  Injecting the absurdly comical tone of the Coen brother’s A Serious Man (2009), a wildly irreverent take on the Book of Job and the Jewish bar mitzvah, which Seligman transfers here to a family shiva, where mourners stuff themselves on bagels and rugelach while catching up on the latest family gossip.  Seligman mines the territory for underlying humor, calculatingly playing with stereotypes while planting the seeds of existential turmoil, which only escalate into fertile grounds for emotional explosions taking place inside the lead character of Danielle, who moves from one emotional bombshell to the next.  Mirroring the endless travails of Job, the director employs humor as a self-defense mechanism, which has long been the prerogative of Jewish comedians, invoking their own specific comedic dialect, protecting them against anti-Semitism and an often-threatening world, frequently focusing on their personal problems, while almost always containing a strong element of alienation.  To her parents, she’s something of a disappointment, as all the other girls her age are entering grad school or having babies, so they prep Danielle about what to say as she lies about nonexistent job prospects that are only a fantasy in her mind.  A study in sustained tension, the film captures the pressures of mounting internal uncertainties, including her indecisiveness and lack of direction, feeling stuck in time, surrounded by insufferable guests who offer ill-advised and unrequested advise, much like Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate, transformed to a twentysomething bisexual Jewish college senior without a major, something she can’t actually define, yet she’s incessantly questioned about it, seemingly answering differently with each inquiry, though her only solid form of employment, supposedly, is “babysitting,” a conveniently safe term to cover up for her promiscuous sexual activity.  

Sex work dressed up in the language of female empowerment is an edgy aspect of modern feminism, and a surprisingly common activity among female college students, both in Great Britain, Europe, and America (What Student Sex Workers Want You To Know - Refinery29), as it’s a way to earn steady income to offset the obscene costs of rising rentals and college expenses, often latching onto a safe and steady man known as a sugar daddy for their revenue stream, setting up appointments via online apps, as previously highlighted in Jacques Audiard’s 2021 Top Ten List #6 Paris, 13th District (Les Olympiades, Paris 13e).  The leading website is Seeking, formerly SeekingArrangement, initially a website seeking sugar daddies (NYU is one of the top schools on the website), now a mainstream dating site, with over 40 million users, available in 130 countries.  While registering is free, you won’t be able to contact other members without paying for their platform (Seeking Arrangement Review: Does It Work in 2022? We Tried It).  Of note, in 2012 when the Republican Convention was in Tampa, Florida, the site saw a 26% increase in site users.  Even the director joined the website for one date, “It just wasn’t for me,” she says.  “I’m not cut out for it.”  With a budget of around $200,000, shot over 16 pre-Covid days in August 2019, the film is shot almost entirely at one specific location, with cinematographer Maria Rusche largely using handheld cameras to accentuate the claustrophobic confinement of the event, using ‘Scope to capture additional characters within the same frame.  Either ignored or excluded from commercial theaters, this will more likely be seen on streaming services, where even regular television shows will receive far greater exposure and hype.  Featuring a wordy script, with a heavy accent on stereotypical Jewish characters, an overbearing mother (Polly Draper), a completely oblivious father (Fred Melamed), both making excuses about the ambivalence of her career choices, the film becomes a cringeworthy intersection of hyped parental expectations colliding with the indifference of youth, as Danielle hasn’t got a clue what her future holds, yet she moves from one distant relative to the next, each asking the same questions about what she intends to do, why she doesn’t have a boyfriend, even inferring she may have an eating disorder, all making her sink into her inner sanctum of immediately changing the subject and finding some trivial task to perform, moving from room to room, as she seeks to escape from the continual pressure of judgmental family evaluations.  In a choreography of spectacularly uncomfortable moments, Danielle has no real connection to the deceased, or to most of the relatives packed into such tight quarters, instantly feeling suffocated, particularly when she realizes Max is there, the same man she was with in the opening of the film faking an orgasm in his overly spacious SoHo bachelor pad, who suddenly realizes she’s not an aspiring entrepreneur moonlighting in sex work to help get her through law school, and suddenly her private affairs are on full public display, about to be exposed, forcing her to lie through her teeth and endure the wrath of guilt and humiliation in this savage satire of existential embarrassment.  Reinforced by an atonal musical score that offers no relief, underscoring her rapidly increasing anxiety at every turn, this is a comedy of errors that only grows more dizzyingly out of control, a carefully choreographed slow death by paper cuts, with the world caving in all around her, leaving her no avenue of escape.  The presence of Maya, who is a showcase of success, heading for law school, the picture of every parent’s dreams, yet she’s also her life support, as this is a person she genuinely cares about, not even remembering why or how they ever separated, having mixed emotions that she’s forced to restrain, and then Max’s staggeringly successful wife arrives, Kim (Dianna Agron), described as a shiksa princess wife, dazzlingly beautiful, the epitome of corporate feminism, running multiple business enterprises, hideously described by Danielle as a “girlboss,” feeling small in comparison, yet she’s brought with her their inconsolable crying baby, whose piercing screams send her into a panicked distress, a recurring motif incorporated into a soundtrack of anxiety. 

Something should be said about Rachel Sennott, as she literally carries the picture, utterly flabbergasted in an escalating series of exasperating moments, little by little losing every shred of dignity left, as her protective shield of lies leaves her squirming in disbelief, wondering how she ever found herself in this situation, yet she soldiers on from one mishap to the next, at times defiant, yet also utterly defeated.  Raised to believe she could do anything, she is nonetheless entitled, yet extremely relatable, coddled and pampered at every turn by well-off suburban parents who continually raise the bar on what to expect, where weddings and funerals and shivas are public opportunities for parents to sing the praises of their children, like listing a menu of delicious entrees, each one more delectable than the next, all paraded for public consumption, reminiscent of the scene in Mary Harron’s American Psycho (2000) where young executives pull out their business cards, each trying to outdo the other in a fiercely competitive field.  Yet something’s changed from the older generation to now, as the great jobs and careers that used to provide lifelong security in their lifetimes have dried up and disappeared, leaving slim pickings for the younger generation, who are offered temp work instead, with fewer benefits, even with college degrees, which no longer seem to matter, resulting in multiple career changes, something their parents simply don’t understand.  While trying to process everything that’s going on, Danielle’s constantly barraged by questions about her life, subject to scrutiny of an intensely personal nature, not something easily done in a room full of what feels like strangers, family that she has little to no contact with except for these seemingly officiated occasions, with the heads of the family holding court, all projecting wildly ambitious dreams through their children, spreading the word about the juiciest family gossip, leaving her feeling useless and insignificant in an interplanetary cosmos of moving planets.  Even Maya gets in on the game of needling her, seemingly enjoying her personal misery, but she also offers her a lifeline in a momentary reprieve, sharing a kiss out of prying eyes, yet also a reminder of just what she’s missing.  A scathing commentary on contemporary Jewish life in America, Seligman has a deft hand in how this all plays out, using precise camera positioning and meticulously realized long takes, where everything that happens is seen through the eyes of Danielle, like an obstacle course of harrowing moments, a smorgasbord of unpleasantries, moving from room to room in a psychologically and emotionally shattering experience, with viewers subjected to a marathon of carnage left behind, becoming a subversive take on the limits of feminism and freedom, as her breakdown reflects the alienating consequences of social judgment, and is a direct consequence of the policing of her bodily autonomy by other people.  Key to the film’s understanding is her evolving relationship with Max, who turns out to be a former employee of her father that quickly turns the tables on her, his ballbusting wife Kim, who picks up on her husband’s philandering and goes after her with a vengeance, her own parents, making excuses and covering for her at every turn, and finally with Maya, where there is an instant reconnection, perhaps out of desperation, as she juggles her own self-deception and finally comes to terms with her own failures, never living up to the best version of herself, crumbling under the prying eyes of distant family members.  Essentially a relationship movie and a quest for discovery, this odyssey of combustible discomfort is only escalated by the crying wails of an innocent baby that completely undercuts her equilibrium, like a house of cards collapsing, where underneath it all are moments of longing and affection for Maya, her saving grace, as if clinging for respectability, yet in such a non-traditional way, the Jewish princess that falls in love, not with Prince Charming, but with another Jewish princess.  While there are only subtle references here, queer culture and Jewish culture don’t normally intersect, as Jewish queer representation in film is minimal, as it’s just not the Disney story we’ve all grown up hearing, ingloriously turned on its ear, flying off the radar, treading one’s own path, even if that means shattering parental dreams of that perfect life that they can share at family gatherings, boasting about personal achievements and financial success, giving them bragging rights.  This may tamper their expectations, but offer a new reality, an untold story, a new possibility.  It’s just a different dream, really, where success is not measured by the size of one’s bank account, but one’s personal happiness.  What actually matters seems so simple, but it requires a conscious adjustment of values, an ever-evolving change in the Jewish girl narrative, where challenging films like this may help pave the way.      

Annie Hall

Director Woody Allen on the set

Allen on the set with cameraman Gordon Willis

ANNIE HALL           A-                   

USA  (93 mi)  1977  d: Woody Allen

I keep sifting the pieces of the relationship through my mind and examining my life and trying to figure out where did the screw-up come.

— Alvy Singer (Woody Allen)

For its time, ANNIE HALL was a startlingly original film, bridging the gap between straight comedy and drama, making that great leap forward, becoming a rare critical and commercial success, made on a $4 million dollar budget, the film grossed nearly ten times that amount, winning accolades and awards, including the Academy Award for Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Original Screenplay, with Diane Keaton winning Best Actress, all confirming Allen’s status as a great artist, ironically happening in the same year as the release of blockbuster hit STAR WARS (1977).  The two films epitomize the Hollywood divide between smaller art films and large-scale commercial moneymakers, one with almost no international appeal while the other does extremely well on the global market.  Often viewed as Allen’s most appealing film, looking back in time, however, the film pales in comparison to the more dramatically accomplished Manhattan (1979), arguably Allen’s greatest artistic triumph, alongside Stardust Memories (1980), Hannah and Her Sisters (1986), Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989), and 2013 Top Ten List #7 Blue Jasmine, though my personal favorite for pure unadulterated joy remains the hilariously weird Broadway Danny Rose (1984).  Perhaps it has something to do with how much you can endure Diane Keaton’s klutzy shtick, where this film doesn’t age as well as some of his others, especially Allen’s efforts to shape the entitled character of Annie Hall (Diane Keaton) in his image (which is soundly rejected), as the film is not really about her, but about Allen’s view of himself, described by Annie as an island unto himself, satirically expressing his inability to relate to Annie or any other woman, except in his imagination.  While this film takes steps towards drama, it remains first and foremost a screwball comedy, listed at #4 in the American Film Institute’s poll of the top 100 American comedies, AFI's 100 Years...100 Laughs - Wikipedia, mostly taking place in Allen’s mind, providing a distinctive Jewish-American identity, including a brief stand-up comedy act, opening and closing the film with old Borscht Belt jokes, with several asides directly to the audience, having flashbacks to former wives and lovers, including Carol Kane’s infamous quip to Allen after making love, “Sex with you is really a Kafkaesque experience.”  But the centerpiece of the film is an infamous affair with Annie Hall that includes prolonged mayhem, modeled on their own romantic relationship (though at the time of the film’s release Allen and Keaton had been separated for at least four years), turning into a beginner’s guide to a neurotic love affair, each with their own insecurities and obsessions that continually get in the way, eventually growing tired of each other, but she surprises him by cutting off the romance and making a move to Los Angeles, a cardinal sin in Woody world, where he remains an entrenched New Yorker.  At the outset as comic Alvy Singer he reveals he has a hyperactive imagination, claiming to have trouble distinguishing between fantasy and reality, which sets the stage for the film.  Beginning on a street in New York City, with Alvy living in a house under a giant roller coaster in the Coney Island section of Brooklyn, he and his childhood friend Rob (Tony Roberts) reflect back on their lives, with Rob continually referring to him as Max, with Alvy getting to the truth about living in New York City, “Don’t you see?  The rest of the country looks upon New York like we’re leftwing, communist, Jewish, homosexual pornographers.  I think of us that way, sometimes.  And I live here!”  Brought up in Brooklyn during the postwar era, both are able to magically speak to long dead relatives in memories and ask pertinent questions, taking him through his troubled childhood with a kind of Groucho Marx sensibility, following him through early years of therapy with Alvy depressed at the thought of discovering the universe is constantly expanding, all the while searching for love, blocked by his own fear of commitment, with suggestions that love is what makes life worth living.

Recognized wearing his signature black-rim framed glasses, with his films offering Allen’s zany point of view, the success of this film elevated into mainstream culture what it meant to be a “Woody Allen film,” reaching unprecedented success for over a decade until 1989.  Coming from a long line of romantic comedies, from Shakespeare’s endless squabbling between Beatrice and Benedict from Much Ado About Nothing, to the screwball comedies of Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn, Woody Allen and Diane Keaton join the list in this bittersweet view of modern love, using memories of a romance after it is over, as Alvy looks back on his life through a series of incidents told in no particular order, yet interestingly conveys at the outset that he has broken up with Annie Hall.  When they initially meet, nervously exploring their awkward thoughts while checking each other out, subtitles are used to indicate what they are really thinking while a typically banal conversation takes place.  When asked about her previous boyfriends, rather than answer, Annie and Alvy stare and watch, along with viewers, as a younger version of Annie is seen with her boyfriends, both offering a running commentary about what they see from a modern day perspective, a device Allen uses again when he returns to his second grade class, contending that in 1942 he had already discovered women, where he’s scolded for kissing a girl in class, but is then seen as an adult sitting at his desk defending himself, speaking directly to the audience, though surrounded by his elementary school classmates.  Allen also resorts to split screen techniques, with both Annie and Alvy seen in therapy sessions complaining about a lack of progress in their relationship, with Alvy complaining they hardly ever have sex, only three times a week, while Annie says they have sex constantly, maybe three times a week.  This device is used again when they visit Annie’s Protestant family in Wisconsin, shown side by side with Alvy’s Jewish family, hilariously showing the stark contrast.  Alvy is never viewed in a positive light by his own family, even going back to his childhood years, suggesting something is always missing from his life, like joy or happiness, yet Alvy’s own take is that he had a happy childhood.  Much of the humor in the film is Jewish humor, where Allen is highly reactionary to his own deep-seeded paranoia about growing anti-Semitism, including the visit to Annie’s family, where he’s sure her endearing “Grammy” loathes and detest him for being Jewish, always giving him the evil eye, which Allen exaggerates to being a Nazi sympathizer.  Another technique is resorting to animation.  During one heated argument, Annie and Alvy turn into cartoon characters, with Annie transforming into the Wicked Queen from SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARFS (1937).  One of the more clever devices has Annie and Alvy waiting in line to see a movie, forced to endure the obnoxiously pretentious pontificating of a loud-mouthed NYU professor standing behind them, getting on Alvy’s last nerve, but when the man starts raving about teaching the theoretical ideas of Marshall McLuhan, Alvy steps out of line and out of nowhere pulls the real Marshall McLuhan out of the lobby to denounce the meaningless and superficial utterings coming out of the man’s mouth, thoroughly justifying Alvy’s sense of moral outrage, turning to the camera and uttering, “Boy, if life were only like this!”       

Despite the novel techniques used by the director, none of the characters reveal themselves with any depth, remaining content to highlight comical moments, strung together in vignettes, where their relationship runs hot and cold, on and off, and back on again, before running out of gas, never delving into the missing ingredients, as they never figure out how to address their conflicting interests.  Annie likes to smoke a joint before sex, as it helps her to relax, while Alvy grows irate that she needs a substance to enhance the mood in order to deal with him, thinking instead it should be natural and hormonal, yet each constructs artificial barriers that the other person is not willing to overcome, beautifully expressed in a scene having sex, with Annie literally stepping out of her body like a ghostly phantom, literally separating the mind from the body, sitting alone in a chair simply passing the time, as if waiting for it to be over, leaving Alvy with a lifeless body to make love to, ingeniously remarking that she feels distant and removed.  Throughout their relationship, Alvy pushes his own agenda onto her, causing Annie to think he views her as shallow and uneducated, not intelligent enough to take seriously, as he pushes dreadfully serious books on her, each one pertaining to death, while also suggesting she take adult evening classes, thinking it would do her a world of good.  This does little to promote her self-esteem, which is publicly on display during an audition at a random club, with Annie singing an excessively slow version of “It Had to Be You” Annie Hall Diane Keaton sings (3:21), singing again near the end, Diane Keaton - It Seems Like Old Times (2:30), and while Alvy confesses support, he does little to help advance her career, showing outward defiance against a move to Los Angeles, suggested by a sleazy record producer (none other than Paul Simon) who would love to record her, whose luxurious home in Los Angeles with palm trees and a pool is the site of his recording studio, with Los Angeles portrayed as a Hollywood fantasy, where even his old friend Rob has moved out there and continually sings the praises, but Alvy is disgusted by his artificial use of canned laughter to enhance the jokes and make him appear to be funnier.  ANNIE HALL is an early version of Manhattan, as much a romanticized ode to the city of New York as it is to the named character, filming all over the city at some of Allen’s favorite locations, including Annie Hall’s apartment on 68th Street between Lexington and Park Avenues in Manhattan which Allen has noted is his favorite block in the city.  Gorgeously filmed by cinematographer Gordon Willis, Manhattan is given a glamorized look, hyperenergetic, filled with the nervous energy of those living there, viewed through conversations, clubs, bookshops, restaurants, and a plethora of cinemas, where art house theaters show foreign film masterpieces like THE GRAND ILLUSION (1937) and THE SORROW AND THE PITY (1969), while marquees in Los Angeles advertise schlock films like HOUSE OF EVIL (1968) and MESSIAH OF EVIL (1973), literally skewering the West Coast mentality, reflecting Allen’s disdain for what he perceives as a shallower culture.  Yet to Annie, Los Angeles is a symbol of freedom, while Alvy has panic attacks and car problems, emblematic of all the traffic back-ups that he turns into a demolition derby of disgust, reminiscent of the bumper cars he used to play in his youth, returning back to New York to write his first play, a dramatization of his and Annie’s relationship, allowing art to produce a more favorable outcome.  When the real Truman Capote appears in a Truman Capote look-alike game at the beach, it blurs the lines between fiction and reality, allowing viewers to make their own choices, where perhaps the ultimate message is that in art and life we need our illusions.  

'Annie Hall': One of the Last Beautiful American Films of the ...  Cinephilia & Beyond