Shiva Baby - 2020
It is difficult to recall a more impressive debut feature film in recent memory. I have personally been at war with a kind of mental Cerberus since viewing Emma Seligman's masterwork. Only this time the question is which of the three fanged beasts - the acid-dipped writing of the hysterical and Kafkaeque screenplay, the surefire acting chops of Rachel Sennott and Polly Draper, or the hair-raising score enveloping the whole affair - stands king.
You really cannot go wrong in the selection process. Wherever you look, you are surrounded by competence and smarts. I opt for the descriptor "Kafkaesque" for very specific reasons, given two of its most significant connotations. For this is a story about a girl who, feeling a little aimless as she nears completion of her college degree, begins hooking up with sugar daddies. Unbeknownst to her, however, one suitor which she has taken a special shine to shows up at a shiva our leading lady is attending with family with his gorgeous wife and young child in tow. Kafka's characters were often responsible in some way for their own torturous experience. Despite her unknowns, the world in which Danielle (Sennott) finds herself is ultimately the result of her own choosing.
More to the Kafka point, as the film progresses, the stakes begin to rise and the picture almost goes beyond realism. Danielle's parents, played so ably by Polly Draper and Fred Melamed, heighten this growing sense of claustrophobia and blurred reality. Cameras zoom, spin, and shake to reinforce the vertigo of the film's protagonist.
But it is the score which really does the heavy lifting. Uncut Gems has been raised by more than one observant reviewer (including Letterboxd's own and my good friend thekliner - FOLLOW HIM), and it is an entirely apt comp. Sometimes the score is not so much music as just odd and eerie sounds which are all about mood and feeling. Yet, like Uncut, they’re a constant, driving background presence of menace throughout the film's runtime.
There is nothing more unsettling to me than a picture which threatens to come apart at its seams. In just this fashion, Shiva Baby holds us in its grip for well over an hour. We keep wondering, wishing, praying hope against hope that Danielle will not submarine her life and dignity for some dope and his all-too-perfect wife. Yet we remain convinced that the spinning plates she's been holding for far too long WILL eventually come crashing down. It is ultimately this tension, between what we know of Danielle's inner life and what threatens to come seeping out into the outer world, which gives Shiva Baby its lasting luster. That and, oh yeah, Rachel Sennott's go-for-broke, heart-gripping performance is just about as good as it gets.
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