We've got plenty of room!
Continuing my trip up The Guardian's Top 50 Films of 2021
#44 : Shiva Baby
Writer-director Emma Seligman’s debut about a young woman running into her sugar daddy at a family event is an amusing, transparently personal piece, a black comedy festival of excruciating embarrassment.
I've not seen this (like every other film on the list so far - but we won't have to wait as long as last year to meet the first one I have seen) but I have heard it's good. However, the phrase "excruciating embarrassment" is somewhat worrying me - I don't tend to do well with embarrassing films. But here goes anyway...
...and we're done. Wow - 77 minutes including credits. Tight! It has a very efficient two minute set up which establishes that the main character is "seeing" someone she probably shouldn't be and then they bump into each other at a shiva (I'm going to risk causing offence and simplify things to say it's a Jewish wake) and it becomes increasingly clear that she definitely shouldn't be. With much embarrassment ensuing. But it's pretty funny embarrassment - I actually laughed out loud quite a few times (and this is pretty rare for me). A lot of the film plays as farce, but it mixes it in a dose of realism as well (particularly in the second half, where things do threaten to get a bit overwhelming at times).
The shiva is actually a great location for a film with people circulating and interacting and it has a nice degree of claustrophobia to it. It's also amusing that the film manages to end in an even more claustrophobic location - I wasn't 100% convinced the film needed to end there particularly given that we'd only had seventy-something minutes by then. I'd have been happy to have another ten minutes or so (I'm generous that way!)
The film is well acted by all and it also feels like there are many more people in the film that the ten or so people who are the main cast. Rachel Sennott deserves all the plaudits she got in the main role but she's ably supported by everyone - I'm going to namecheck Fred Melamed as her amusingly "helpful" dad, but they all play their part well. A lot of this has to be down to Emma Seligman's writing and direction - she manages to convey a lot of character very efficiently through (often extremely witty) dialogue and actions.
And a couple more areas to compliment before I finish - the score to the film is peculiar (more akin to a horror film than a comedy) but works surprisingly well and the location is excellently chosen and really enhances the overall mood of the film.
One thing that I feel I should comment on is that it does somewhat play on/reinforce several Jewish stereotypes (they even say "converted schmonverted" at one point) - it's not something that I could find offence at (it feels pretty good natured to me) and the mostly Jewish cast (although, amusingly the lead actress isn't and the one non-Jewish cast member is played by someone who is) and writer don't seem overly offended, but I can see it might annoy some people. I guess it's up to them to comment further though if they feel the need!
In case you hadn't guessed, I really liked this film. It has a lot of ingredients that wouldn't generally be my cup of tea but the overall effect is funny, smart and (eventually) heartwarming. It's certainly an impressive directorial debut from Emma Seligman and I'll be watching out for whatever she does next. It's also the first film I've seen on the list which is anywhere close to the quality bar set by Promising Young Woman at #50 - here's hoping for a few more like this!
At the time of writing, the film is available to stream on MUBI (if you're one of the two people in the country that subscribe to that service) or to rent at most of the other more usual suspects. And it's well worth you spending your money on the brief time it will take you to watch it.
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