Disobedience (2018)

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Disobedience Movie Review

Disobedience is a 2018 drama film directed by Sebastian Lelio and starring Rachel Weisz and Rachel McAdams. It’s a solid and effective, but not particularly engaging film.

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“No, I don’t think you should leave at all“

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The story follows a forbidden romantic relationship between two Jewish women who fear being ostracized from their society. The movie deals with a complicated, troublesome relationship between religion and sexuality, particularly homosexuality. It explores that theme solidly, although it doesn’t go too far with it.

Rachel McAdams is very good here in an atypical role for her. She gave a rather stupendous, emotive performance. As for Rachel Weisz, she fitted her role very well and also was quite strong. The two are excellent together and the film is at its best in the romantic scenes between the two characters. I also found their sex scene very hot. Alessandro Nivola’s character is underutilized, but he did give a terrific performance in a smaller role.

Disobedience is very erotic in certain scenes and that sex scene it the most memorable in the entire film. I wish the film had more romantic or sexual scenes between the two as for the most part here we get a meditative, slow moving drama with long stares and thoughts from afar.

I do realize that by having a more subtle approach, the film ended up being much more realistic and definitely the risk of becoming too sentimental was cut in half thanks to such an approach. However, the film went too far with its subdued approach and it ended up being too subtle and uneventful, at least in my opinion.

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The pace is definitely very slow and it makes the film not particularly investing for most people. I did not find it boring, but I also did not find it particularly engaging. The direction from Sebastian Lelio is very good, but I do prefer his ‘A Fantastic Woman’ much more as a more interesting, better crafted and more dramatic piece of work. He directed both a trans and a lesbian movie so I think it would only be fitting that he directs a gay male film for his next project.

Disobedience is a solid lesbian film that benefits from typically strong direction from Sebastian Lelio and both excellent performances from Rachel Weisz and Rachel McAdams. It explores the difficult relationship between religion and homosexuality rather well and it has a couple of nice romantic sequences. But it’s also way too subdued, uneventful and slow in its approach, thus effectively robbing it of immediacy.

My Rating – 3.5