Disobedience (3/5 Stars)

I confess that I wanted this movie to be worse. Part of the reason I saw it at all had to do with the promised outrageous scandal of the Hasidic Jewish lesbian love affair between actresses Rachel Weisz and Rachel McAdams. A bad movie might have been hilarious and/or sexy. Unfortunately and fortunately this turned out to be a good movie about the forbidden romance of two Hasidic Jewish lesbians. Sexy at times yes, but not hilarious, and at some points rather touching. In fact, for the first time in an untold amount of movies, the conclusion to this particular type of story had a conservative bent. For once, sexual liberation does not get the upper hand in its age old war against traditional community values.

We find Ronit Krushka (played by Rachel Weisz) in New York. She works as a photographer. She ice skates. She drinks. She has casual sex with strange men. Then she receives a phone call. Her father, a venerated rabbi in a tightly bound Hasidic Jewish community in London has died. She has been outcast for some time.

She returns home. Everyone is surprised to see her but greet her with politeness. She first comes to the house of Dovid Kuperman (played by Alessandro Nivola). The funeral ceremonies are being held there because he was an important pupil of the rabbi. Its awkward though because Ronit and Dovid were in a relationship when she left for good. A further twist develops when the reason she the leave enters the room as Dovid’s now wife, one Esti Kuperman (played by Rachel McAdams). Esti it is established is lesbian. Ronit seems like she is bisexual. In any case, their relationship was frowned upon and Ronit simply left the community. Esti married Dovid.

For the most part, this movie follows the forbidden love genre track. It is a Romeo and Juliet storyline: the two lovers against the unjust world. Until, quite amazingly, it doesn’t follow through. There is something strange about this community. For all its stifling conformity, it is apparent that Ronit misses being apart of it. Witness her trying on a wig and keeping it on for a day. Look at the way she enviously eyes those she has left behind in the coffee shop. Then there is Esti. She finds Ronit more attractive than her husband, but she doesn’t want to elope to New York. She likes these people. There is even a scene where the husband is teaching Torah to some pimply faced teenage boys. They are studying a passage in which sex is the main feature. The boys interpret the passage as simply expressing physical pleasure. But, points out Dovid, isn’t there a type of love that is more than that?

What saves this movie from being a simple polemic against homosexuality is the main theme of it. It does not present the question as just dogma: if you don’t do as we say you will go to hell. It presents an actual choice. You can choose self-fulfillment in this particular way that this community does not recognize, or you can choose this community. The movie suggests that the latter can be a real choice made by a real person who is not brainwashed and not being abused by this community. That is, being part of this community might actually be worth the sacrifice being made. The point though is that the morality of the question necessarily depends on the choice of the individual. It is a question so fundamental to one’s identity that it needs to be independently made. What I love about this movie is that it asserts a free-thinking individual can assert an unselfish identity. There is rightly much cynicism about this topic, but yes, ultimately I believe it too.