A farce borne of humiliation that achieves the tension of a tautly constructed horror film, Emma Seligman’s Shiva Baby is a smart comedy of errors about a young collegiate returning home for a pressure cooker Jewish funeral only to contend with a cavalcade of unwelcome surprises.
Extrapolating on her 2018 same-titled short, Seligman has made an anxious, Pandora’s Box comedy so filled with acerbic zingers that begs us let our guard down and laugh – so it can push us, and its heroine, right back into a claustrophobic corner.
A whipsmart, above-it-all Rachel Sennott stars as adrift Manhattan college senior Danielle, whom we first meet in a ribald older man/younger woman sex-for-pay arrangement, the first of several provocative (and some true-life) observations in Seligman’s first-time screenplay.
While flush paramour Max (Danny Deferrari) gifts Danielle to support her future “law school” aspirations, in reality she is an academically aimless, part-time nanny with no substantial after college plans (other than cultivating her feminist “lens”).
Arriving home for the Shiva, Danielle’s demonstrative, flamboyant mother (Polly Draper, a hoot) and befuddled father (Fred Melamed) network to find her a job amidst the grievers. She is also cautioned against “funny business” with her ex-love Maya (Molly Gordon), a surprise attendee.
Danielle and Maya’s doomed relationship didn’t work out, but they still share a special flirtation to the ire of Danielle’s mother, who wants the past kept on the downlow from the many prying, judgmental eyes.
Trapped in exceedingly tight quarters with her acrimonious ex and forced to answer a litany of uncomfortable personal questions from the entire neighborhood, Danielle is mortified when sugar daddy Max (who coincidentally worked for her father) shows up, followed by his “beautiful shiksa princess” wife (Diana Agron) and newborn.
The picture’s juggling act of these stakes-raising escalations erodes Danielle’s in-denial version of herself built on falsehoods to everyone and methodically stripped away by her parents, Maya and Max over the course of the afternoon (which hilariously involves shattered social graces, binge eating, upstairs/downstairs trysts and a memorable scene of power and control between mistress and wife) produces an anxiety that’s hard to shake. The camera roves through too crowded rooms from which there is no escape from watchful close-ups, and the ever present, unsettling score by Ariel Marx, rendered in awkward string arrangements, ratchets tension.
Sennott, with her big, wide-open eyes (which the camera loves) that suggest to gaze directly into them might be to disappear whole, is compelling as Danielle cleverly tiptoes around numerous landmines, enjoying putting others at unease, including deliberately tripping Max up in his lies to her father about the origin of their connection or fiendishly toying with the smart, entrepreneurial Kim, a vision of perfect blonde ambition so poised it proves difficult to unbalance. The star does a terrific job peeling back Danielle’s armor and illusions about the limits of her sexual power and the realization that something has to give – and it may be her fear of a commitment to her own future.
Such searching is impressively balanced with more superficial comic comforts, namely Draper and Melamed as a weary, long-time marrieds whose mutual, petty chiding about dementia provides some welcome lightness. Seligman amusingly up the shiva itself, a ceremony of grieving that here is presented as a social event complete with networking, illicit trysts, eating, networking and babysitting; the deceased is nearly an afterthought.
Taking elements of her own life and observations on her world – including bisexuality and the prevalent Sugar Baby arrangements she saw on campus – Seligman has made an original, incisive picture in a concentrated 77 minutes (it’s closer to 73 sans closing credits) that deliver a powder keg of aggression, anxiety and self-delusions, all laid bare.
3 1/2 stars.
