Désobéissance

Disobedience is a truly beautiful film about the challenges of being human, balancing your beliefs, your expectations and your true self. So many people struggle to accept who they really are, because they're afraid of the reactions of others. Perhaps deeply religious people have a tougher time than others, because they often judge themselves at least as harshly as their communities.

Rachel Weisz and Rachel McAdams do a great job playing the two childhood friends (Ronit and Esti) who meet again years later, only to discover that their feelings for each other haven't changed. Alessandro Nivola plays the young rabbi husband (Dovid) of Rachel McAdams character (Esti), and portrays him beautifully.

I encourage you to see it. I doubt that you'll regret it.

Disobedience is a very well written love story between two women, set in a religious community. I loved the acting in it, Rachel McAdams and Rachel Weisz are great in it. What surprised me the most was the complexity of the male character played by Alessandro Nivola, who is a stand out in my opinion. He is incredibly written and the ending of the film where some decisions need to be made gets very touching. The movie is a bit slow in some parts but really that's my only real complaint. Overall I would recommend this movie to anyone who wants to see a love story done right, well done to everyone involved with the movie as they did a wonderful job.

While the movie is very slow paced, the story is a beautiful one! The two actresses are brilliant on their own, and shine together in this film. Worth a watch for any lover of cinema.

Ronit (Rachel Weisz), a single middle-aged photographer, returns to England from New York following the death of her father, an esteemed ultra-Orthodox rabbi who had been the spiritual leader of this non-Hasidic congregation and its institutions. It immediately becomes evident that due to personal issues she had left the community at a very young age and never looked back. As the story develops, we learn that Esti (Rachel McAdams), now wife of Dovid Kuperman (the departed rabbi's chief disciple and heir apparent, played by Alessandro Nivola) had struggled with similar issues alongside Ronit in their youth but had chosen a drastically different method of coping.

With Ronit's return, old sentiments are dredged up in a manner that upends the lives of all three in a community that simply has not developed tools for dealing with the full spectrum of matters involving private life, nature and choice that have in recent years become so normalized that we hardly lend them so much weight.

As each of the three struggle to cope with their issues, it becomes clear that there is a void in place of a guide in the doctrine of the community and that there is no one right way to cope with outlying struggles.

The directing of the picture and the portrayal of the three main characters is stellar. Aside from two seven-candle menorahs (which have no place in a Jewish home), this picture stands out as perhaps the most authentic portrayal of the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community in motion picture history.

I really wanted to love this movie. Some parts I enjoyed but was repeatedly taken out of the narrative by filmmaker choices.

The editing left much to be desired-scenes are awkwardly edited where you can see it's a different take of the same scene. Many of the edits simply appeared ham-handed and amateur.

Continuity also seems an issue; the progress of the story is chunked out, like skipping around chapters in a book. The screenplay lacks the dialog which would convey the depth of the story and it's characters.

The actors are quite good but not able to fill all the missing bits of good filmmaking. The score was musically fine but seems to have been written for a different movie. The pacing too, is slow and awkward like much of this film.

The Rachels handled what little they had to work with well. The sex scene was interesting and respectfully shot but again, the editing sucked all the life out of this love story.

Though I think this film was a missed opportunity, the potential for a well-written and directed sequel could fix what didn't work in this outing.

I really wanted to like it but kinda didn't.