"Shiva Baby" (2020), the feature directorial debut from 26-year-old Canadian Jewish filmmaker Emma Seligman, is a stressful and chaotic film that has finally been released to video on demand. The film follows Danielle (Rachel Sennott), a jaded college student on the cusp of graduation, as she navigates a shiva (a Jewish tradition that takes place after a burial for mourners to reminisce and eat good food) surrounded by her parents, her sugar daddy, her sugar daddy’s (surprise) wife and newborn baby, her ex-girlfriend and a whole host of inquisitive middle-aged acquaintances. It is a claustrophobic, high-octave panic attack of a movie that is as visceral as it is awkward.
The film works as an experiment to discover just how anxious a filmmaker can make their audience; there’s good reason for why the film has earned the comparison to another recent anxiety-inducing film with Jewish characters, the Safdie brothers' "Uncut Gems" (2019). One Twitter user’s comparison has been used as a trailer epigraph,describing the film as “'Uncut Gems' for hot jewish sluts.”
The movie in its entirety, save for the cold open, takes place in the same house throughout the roughly four hours spent at the shiva. This tight space and contained time frame leave little room for escape or respite, as the characters are all thrown together and thrust into conversation and interaction. A big highlight of the film is its score — plucked strings and echoing orchestral openings that make for an electric feeling that cause the hairs on the back of your neck to stand up — that follows Danielle through the house. Follow, here, is the key word; much of the camerawork throughout the movie is pushed in close or shaky and nervous as it follows Danielle. The audio and visual directions of the movie collapse into one another as they mirror the erratic emotions through which Danielle is seen wading.
The dialogue is great as well, adding a sense of reality and deadpan humor that work so well at bridging each storyline together. From the over-familiarity of side characters and the gossip that remains constantly in the background, to the brusque honesty and curiosity of the main cast, the plot feels very lived-in. The atmosphere is acutely Jewish. As Seligmandescribed of the humor that inspired her writing, the dialogue is that of “reform, religious-ish Jews.” With comments about Yiddish pronunciation, seemingly random connections between estranged shiva-goers and judgment passed on the behavior of non-Jews in attendance, all of the dialogue seems to underline the Ashki-Jewish aesthetic of a New York reform shiva. Though at times this may come off as stereotypical, the loud conversations and sarcastic humor interwoven throughout the lows of the plot are nonetheless funny and charming.
There are also so many conversations to which Danielle is subject which are framed around prospects and plans following the end of college that every 20-something-year-old is sure to relate to. Equal parts uncomfortable and earnest, the film creates a very self-aware atmosphere that brings us to Danielle’s level. When everything heats up and seems to come to a head, we are right there with Danielle as the horror of embarrassment overwhelms her.
Sennott gives an amazing turn as the overwhelmed Danielle, encapsulating all the little and big emotions of her situation, often all at once. In the quiet moments of introspection and acceptance and in the loud explosions of humiliation and argumentation, her facial expressions perfectly reveal what her character is experiencing. The supporting cast gives a great collective performance as well, with Molly Gordon, Polly Draper, Fred Melamed, Danny Deferrari and Dianna Agron giving measured reflections of the different storylines plaguing Danielle. Witty and horribly uncomfortable, the film is an interwoven and maddened exaggeration of reality, and is as entertaining as it is off-putting.
