AFFAIR PITS PASSION AGAINST PIETY
A BRACE of Rachels, Weisz and McAdams, star in Chilean writer-director Sebastian Lelio’s English-language debut, a tender, moving adaptation of Naomi Alderman’s novel of the same name set in a strictly religious Jewish community in North London.
Weisz plays Ronit, who returns from her secular life in New York, where she works as a photographer, on receiving news that her father, a revered London rabbi (a fleeting cameo for the brilliant Anton Lesser), has died. Ronit wants to pay her
respects even though she and her father were estranged.
Back in the neighbourhood where she was raised, she stays with her chiidhood friend Dovid (Alessandro Nivola), her father’s protégé and spiritual son, and his newish wife Esti (McAdams). This makes for an awkward menage-a
trois, since it was an affair with Esti, and
the consequent horror and disapproval among people whose deeply-held religious beliefs did not accommodate lesbian love, that led to Ronit leaving in the first place. When her and Esti’s feelings for each other are reawakened, lightning strikes for the second time.
Although religious orthodoxy is central to the film, it is less about Judaism than lesbianism.
Really, a strikingly similar story could unfold in any conservative setting, as it has in more than a few other works of fiction, such as Joanna Trollope’s A Village Affair and Jeanette Winterson’s Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit, both adapted for television.
Nonetheless, with profound sensitivity Lelio (and co-writer Rebecca Lenkiewicz) present faith and sexuality as an immovable object meeting an irresistible force.
One will have to give, but which? The question is given real resonance by three exquisite, empathetic performances.
Weisz and McAdams are both wonderful but Nivola quietly steals the show.