#and gloria is a caricature but if you take all that away she is also a lamp. a slightly fancier lamp

[louisferrignojr]

modern family is actually. overall, if you account for all the seasons, mediocre as fuck. because it was only funny for 1-2 seasons. 3 if we're being generous. 4 if we're being VERY generous. the characters are just so. unlikeable. and racist. and the relationships between the couples .. ew. phil and claire have the best relationship on the show obviously because they're well matched. in terms of crazy . and they're never jealous of other people like no one can threaten their relationship! that's very nice to see.

characters i actually like

lily. an icon for weird little girls everywhere<3 she has done nothing wrong in her life ever.

mitchell and claire because they're both neurotic and controlling and that's relatable. they're also extremely correct.

luke was SO funny and adorable and then they wrote him as a gross teenage boy and he lost 90% of his character. welcome to bland town buddy. you're one of manym

phil is also funny and has little to no filter or like. impulse control. he's the personification of my adhd and that's relatable. also he's a little bit bisexual and has no concept of toxic masculinity. he's great honestly

i think alex is probably someone to look up to. for the nerd girls. she has a nice character arc overall. throughout her adolescent years.

that's it i hate everyone else. except Stella i love Stella.

[kdinjenzen]

Now I'm curious WRT how 'Barbie' didn't hit for you.

I’ll say this first. If you liked the movie, I’m happy for you and I’m not here to tell you to hate the movie. I’m glad you enjoyed it and hope you continue to enjoy it.

That said… this movie was NOT for me and I did not enjoy its story at all. I loved the set design, costume design, the performances, the music, the dedication to creating the world, all that stuff was great.

The plot itself. It felt circular without actually purposefully dealing with the issues it tried to talk about.

The fact that Doctor Barbie, who is trans, is the one who is told to “go seduce Ken by telling him you feel don’t feel pretty” - as if this isn’t something that leads to violence toward trans women in the real world and also why her to be the one who doesn’t feel pretty? Wtf?

The Kens of Barbieland are basically all losers, are grossly incompetent compared to Barbie, treated poorly, and our main Ken (aka Beach Ken) has severe self worth issues… so naturally all the Kens become the villains and are able to overthrow all of Barbieland later on in the movie by doing …. they never explain how. Somehow a world full of, and built by, the most capable women ever are overthrown by like 20 dudes who they treated poorly and who aren’t very smart. Beach Ken’s root problems are only barely resolved and none of it feels meaningful.

Gloria and Sasha, the human characters who work with Barbie to fix Barbieland, are just as much caricatures and tropes as Barbie herself. Sasha, the daughter, is a mean Gen Z who just openly lashes out at Barbie (a stranger), and everyone else who is actually nice to her, for no reason. Gloria is “a sad mom who pretends to be happy” but they never explain why at all, it’s assumed that it’s because “she lives in a patriarchy”, but the only person who’s directly mean to her in the film is… her daughter.

Gloria gives a speech to each Barbie, individually, to snap them out of the Ken’s brainwashing (which like AGAIN how did that happen? It makes no sense at all and just confuses me) - the speeches are not empowering at all, they’re just about how women in the real world suffer a double standard on how to exist and SOMEHOW with all those depressing revelations thrown at them it… restores their self-confidence/self-worth and undoes the brainwashing?

Weird Barbie, whom everyone says is ugly and gross and they have violent “EW!!!” reactions to her face, is played by Kate FUCKING McKinnon. Meanwhile Stereotypical Barbie, while having an ugly cry breakdown about (again) not being pretty anymore, is played by Margot FUCKING Robbie. A fact that the movie points out as “the wrong casting choice to have this scene and cast Margot Robbie as Barbie saying she’s ugly.”

I heard so much about how it was a “queer positive movie” but there’s nothing queer about nor really in the movie. So it got to cling to the rainbow and scream “allyship” and everyone praised it for essentially doing nothing.

Everyone is like… mean? Everything feels so mean and mean spirited. It’s supposed to be very tongue in cheek, very snappy and quick, and everyone has a comeback for every situation but… it just really feels like everyone is just being mean for the sake of being mean and it makes moments where you’re supposed to feel sympathy for any character just drop immediately when they say the rudest shit ever for literally no reason.

They talk about Midge, aka the pregnant woman in the Barbie line, and then say “no don’t look at her anymore, she’s weird and creepy” … which AGAIN feels like that statement undercuts the point of women empowerment that the movie wants you to take away from watching the film?

It tries to balance jokes and seriousness in a way that undercuts the message of “society is kind fucked up and broken” that they’re trying to talk about. The “good guys” are also constantly mistreating other people, the “Barbieland bad guys” became bad by going to the real world and leaning “patriarchy”, the “Real world bad guys” literally do nothing except take up movie time for random gags and really don’t service the plot at all, and as much as it’s like “TAKE THAT MAJOR CORPORATION” at every turn… the movie was fully approved by Warner Bros Discovery AND Mattel… so it’s never actually going to say anything worthwhile about corporate greed and corruption without putting on kiddie gloves to do so.

The only person who I felt true sympathy for, understood their reasoning, and felt they deserved a happy ending was ALLAN, aka Ken’s Best Friend, who is treated equally like shit by basically everyone in the film. Allan points out that Barbieland and the Real World both kinda suck, how life is only just slightly more miserable there after the Ken’s took over, and how he just “wants to run away” and when given the chance does so, only to defend Sasha and Gloria from a bunch of Ken’s single handedly and telling them to “get out while they can”… and then is subsequently brought back to Barbieland by Sasha and Gloria to fix everything and… AGAIN none of this pays off because Allan’s purpose is dropped immediately when they get back to Barbieland. And Allan is played by MICHEAL CERA. I feel like I’m losing my mind at this point.

It feels like the movie wants to talk about the issues women face in all walks of life, but is never able to punch hard enough to make that message matter nor stick. It talks around gender issues, self worth issues, and problems in society without actually saying something real about them. The meanness of all the dialogue makes me really not care about pretty much anyone in the movie because… man I’m just so fucking tired of everything and everyone having to be “mean” in movies to prove a point.

The movie ends with a gynecologist appointment.

I dunno what to tell you. The plot is “not for me” and I didn’t really connect with anything.

The movie just made me sad and disconnected because of how much everyone praised it, saying it “made me proud to be a woman” or “it’s inventive, immaculately crafted and surprising mainstream films in recent memory - a testament to what can be achieved within even the deepest bowels of capitalism.”

And it didn’t feel like that for me at all.

Maybe it’s because of all the “that’s womanhood” talk throughout the movie. Because I’ve had so many women in power give me that speech after I came out as trans only to be abused directly by them in the same way that they said men abused them all while I was still ALSO being abused by the same men who abused them too. So like YIPPEE this fucking SUCKS and it was kinda trauma triggering!!

Maybe it’s because I’ve worked in the entertainment industry for 17+ years and know how stuff like this gets made and how many corporate approvals you need for it to make the “take THAT major corporations and CEOs!” jokes land like a dead fish on the floor. The people they are directly calling out said “yes, this level of joke at the expense of our richness and power is okay” and that’s the ONLY reason any of those moments are in the movie. So it doesn’t even really fucking matter, it’s all manufactured, it’s all there to make you feel like it’s doing something when the people with all the power just allowed it to happen. It’s not a “win” or a “heavy blow to their ego”, they literally don’t care.

So I DUNNO, this movie kinda just made me feel depressed and made me remember how badly I had been treated by people after coming out regardless of that person’s gender. The movie felt mean in a way that was too “on the nose” and real for me but then praised most of the characters for their mean actions or words.

[shut-up-im-jay]

PEEPS THERE IS MORE

WHAT ARE. THE. FUCKING. REPRESENTATION. OF. PAIN. IN. ART.

Sorry I’m overly excited rn

I love this. And I’m sorry but I’ll tag peeps here too bc it’s really interesting, tell me if you want more in the future or if you want me to stop tagging me lmao

@whumpthisway @whumpster-dumpster @untilthepainstarts @ashintheairlikesnow 

Let’s dive into it.

SOO how does art represent pain and how does it allow us, spectators, to feel it and why do we represent it in art?

Art and stuff, when I use the word it’ll be about every representation of it, paint, fanfic, writing, films, series.... everything.

first of all, maybe when we experience art we aren’t just communicating with the author and the characters but also with the other readers somehow. Like there is a community behind any form of art

heroïc pain, comical pain and the experiment of pain in stories about real people --> restitution of sensation of pain, (recent phenomenon apparently)  are the three main thing we’re gonna talk about here

What is a hero and what is its link to pain?

stoïc heroes are the ‘best’, those who take pride in toughening up, very often a mannly trait, there is historically a superior power in play. They’re heroic bc they fight till the end knowing that they can’t do anything (see La chanson de Roland, the agony of Charlemagne’s nephew, it’s apparently a really good agony/whump thing)

Action is superior to affection when you’re a hero (martyrs hello, we’re talking about st Sebastian, our true gay icon, I love him)

------ Tbh this is basically the base for whump, but not the cool part. We want our whumpee to go further. The strength is cool but I don’t just want this, I mainly wanna feel the pain and no one is that hero. It’s often more the tipping point that gives me whumperflies --------

Philoctet here. Who is the guy? Heroic af, but he is an ass. So anyway he is wounded and he has an ulcer and yeah that’s why he screams and smells and his friends just let him to die on an island (lmao) bc he has invincible weapons so they just go away with it (savage)

So he is the metaphor of a patient isolated in their pain, that’s cool. Also there is a caretaker in the story. True antic whump peeps.

-----------Now comical pain(?)  (not whump related here)

Can we really laugh about pain? we’re talking about the ripping a bandage kind of comical pain in caricature. How can some kind of pain affect us while other makes us ‘laugh’ or at least be amused...

We then laugh more about the idea of humiliation, for example in comical theater, laughing at the pain as punishment for the ‘bad’ characters. Also laughing makes people superior, so when we laugh together it binds us together, and then pain can be bounding but anyway that’s not the point.

The real question is: how the fuck do we have an insensibility to pain when there is a comical situation?

let’s talk about someone who falls and it’s funny cause they slipped on a banana peel or smtg. bc there is a social convention in the funny situation. Also pain isn’t really obvious, it’s often ambiguous and we can’t really have empathy so yeah, we maybe don’t relate that much? and also small kids don’t seem to find it funny apparently bc they’re not really aware of the comical situation. 

I think that this kind of things would be more interesting to do it as a psychological/social study on why we find things funny related to culture and our background, more than our relation to pain

------------ Now, the historically modern kind of pain tale, the one more related to whump, when the goal really is to describe the pain, often trying to get the spectator to relate.

The body has a new place in art. Historically the soul was really the center of art while nowadays we are more in a somatic art, the body is the focus.

Cenesthesia is the internal perception, the general sensibility we have toward our internal feelings. And it’s a general tendency now, Hunger, K.Hamsun, Nausea, Sartres, they focus on those internal feelings. Another great book: ‘La doulou’, Alphonse Daudet (he suffered from syphilis) and he described in a diary all the pain he was feeling, and he tried to be really accurate. Again, great writing material ig. 

Léon Werth: The white house is an auto-fiction, basically the story of a guy that has an ear infection and his surgery then the fever. The whole story is about post-op sensations. Interestingly enough, the character doesn’t even have a name, the whole story is only to describe the pain, and the main character is really interested in his own pain. He uses GREAT analogies tbh, like there is an industry in his ear and everything, that’s.... that’s good shit. But like, he isn’t bad about it, he is just weirdly okay with it? he only describes things as he feels them, he has some kind of dissociation from his pain. 

This is basically one of the example of pain descriptions in modern art, when the person in pain becomes the spectator of its pain

Dolor y gloria, Pedro Almodovar --> good PTSD shit, how emotional pain becomes physical pain. Two narratives at the same time: the main character with chronic pains as an adult, but then there is the other story: how, as a child, MC was influenced by his past

on an unrelated note, the teacher just said that main character and his mum are hot lmao that’s bi energy af

Well now she’s dissecting a cinematic scene and it’s not really interesting so I’ll try to express what I took out of this. 

Seriously, it wasn’t as cool as I expected it to be, I thought she was going to focus more on how we relate to pain. That’s unfortunate, bc I’d love to have an external pov on whump. The actual psychological effect of seeing pain, and why it’s truly appealing to us. Why the fuck do we enjoy it.

It was more of a dive in the representation of pain in different arts. Some good whump references in it I guess. But nothing really psychological and it’s kinda a shame tbh.

Oh but some cool things maybe(?), some interviews of neurologists:

WHAT IS PAIN AND HOW DOES IT INTERACT WITH THE MEDICAL WORLD?

(also there are people specializing on pain out there which is fucking rad and metal lmao)

Scientific pov: Pain is an experience. Sensorial, emotional and physical. the pain isn’t really localized in a part of your brain. Sure, things are processed in the thalamus but it’s a very large zone already, there are so many ways to feel pain, and so many structures in our brain, it’s almost as complex as memory(!)

-The facial expression of pain and why it’s ambiguous? How to see the pain? There are literal descriptions of non-verbal cues, and how to detect pain (there are even photo stocks of facial pain expressions lmao to try and educate our brains). And often, the more you’re affected, the more you’re ambiguous in the way of expressing it. 

Frowning is one of the first ways of expressing pain, muscles have a kind of order in the way they react.

Our anatomy teacher now: words of pain. As doctors, it’s often unclear how to understand the levels of pain based on patient expressions. So we have precise forms to help, but we need patients to be really educated to have enough vocabulary. Unfortunately sometimes as we already stated, pain can be anesthetic in a way, and hard to describe, and trying to fix the pain in time is near impossible. We would even need to do a linguistic study on pain and stuff to make sure we can be precise (and write more whumpy things lmao)

Here, a take on pain as an alarm system. Dramatic consequences ensue when there are lesions of nerves, so it is obviously a very useful and protecting tool. But then what about neuropathic and chronical pains? They’re basically when in a house, the alarm goes off all the time for no reason. And then the definition of a protecting system is really wrong

What are the bias medical professionals have? The more a patient says he’s in pain, and the less they’re believed (it’s almost an auto protecting factor: we shut down our empathy and it conducts us to underestimates the pain, and this is terrible bc the more you’re in pain, the less you’re going to be actually taking care of!) 

The logic and chaos of pain: either persistence of a physical issue or malfunctioning of nervous systems In a western, there is a tendency to have pain representation when an arrow gets in the flesh, then when it’s extracted, but we mostly won’t even blink when the character just isn’t in pain anymore bc we have that representation of pain being linked to trauma. (whumpers, I think there is where we have something to say: we actually understand the role of pain after the trauma)

And knowing that pain is linked to something is a very relieving factor for most patients. Thus the known placebo effect: if we actually say to patients that there is a cause to their pain, they almost always have better results with pain management! 

Placebo also works the other way around peeps, if you think that smtg is going to be painful, oh boi. It’s gonna hurt like hell. Like more than it should... you get the hint

The human mind is fascinating 

[thefudge]

i saw you reblogged that lost in austen gifset, what did you think of the series?

hoooooo boy, u have poked the bear

there is the short answer: i love-hate it?

and then there’s the impassioned rant you never asked for (IM SORRY):

so, lots of folks who love Lost in  Austen argue that it’s just frothy satire, y’know taking an absurd scenario and milking it to death for laughs

but i think one of the hallmarks of good satire is that it shouldn’t take itself seriously. it should poke fun, while also being aware of what it is. leslie nielsen’s airplane! does not pretend to impart any kind of gravitas.

whereas…

Lost in Austen is a weird hybrid. it wants to be alice in wonderland-absurd, but it also wants to say something meaningful about romance and love and like, family. it wants to elicit an emotional reaction from you, even though it spends 90% of its time mugging at the camera. i think it would have been a far better frolic if it had done away with any pretensions of “drama”. 

basically, you’re fucking with canon? that’s swell. own that shit. don’t fuck with canon and then hide behind it and try to say “no,no, this is still a P&P adaptation” because.. EH.

the capital error this parody-satire made was having its main character (a modern-day gal who, through some wonky shenanigans, enters the universe of the book) end up with Darcy.

like genuinely, honest to god, end up with Darcy. Not ironically, not for laughs. Framed as true love. 

and yes, yes, this is basically OC/self-insert 101; ppl do this all the time in fanfiction. so many modern ladies end up on the quest to take the ring to mordor and charm the pants off of either aragorn or legolas and it doesn’t always make sense. but those folks writing those fics are somewhat aware of what they’re doing. it’s a consciously fuelled guilty pleasure.

LiA wants to surpass guilty pleasure, it wants to be smarter than a self-insert narrative, cuz look, satire!

which is another thing. if you’re satirizing austen of all people, you had better rock it. cuz she was a first-class primadonna. LiA has some pretty funny lines, i’ll give it that, but they lose some of their charm due to the context. this is due to direction/acting. like for example, the guy playing wickham is doing his very best to challenge amanda (the MC) to a witty repartee because amanda, who knows his character from the book, appears to loathe him. this should make for a fun dynamic (i mean that’s the whole premise, right? that she knows p&p so there’s dramatic irony whenever she confronts a character), but for soooome reason, the actress playing amanda is not having any of it. by that i mean that she plays this whole thing in a very dour, serious fashion, like she’s a side-character on atonement or something. i mean, george wickham is flirting with and cajoling her and amanda’s predominant response is a schoolmarmish “most unorthodox!”, with the added open mouth for effect. she is so scandalized by him, but not in a fun way. she’s supposed to be playing along with the wacky scenario, but instead she’s jodie foster in panic room.     likewise, they try to add lots of laughs to mr. and mrs. bennet’s fraught marriage/relationship, and it would work if, once again, they didn’t treat it with such self-importance. mr. bennet keeps shouting obscene things at her, while mrs. bennet is ten seconds away from bursting into real, non-caricatural tears, because this has somehow turned into blue valentine. like you’re almost genuinely wondering if the movie forgot what it was. BINGLEY OMGOSH BINGLEY. he ends up in this existential ennui because jane marries mr. collins (long story, trust me). and he becomes sort of a drunk and a general weirdo?? AND THAT’S THE GAG. i mean you’re not totally sure. is it supposed to be funny, odd, endearing?? the movie can’t make up its mind. but yeah, jane/bingley is treated like fucking romeo & juliet in this “adaptation”, they are SO tragic, they were honestly THE couple of the series, which is pretty ironic given that, as far as i know, we don’t even get to read their dialogue in p&p (we literally just read about them talking, but that’s it. like yeah ofc they’re a good match, but come on, this isn’t supposed to be lust, caution.).

and there are many other examples where the tone is all over the fucking place and the comedy is underwhelmed by the directorial choices. 

which brings me to amanda herself. she’s the culprit in many of my complaints. i’m not here to harangue the actress, but she was woefully miscast and given a terrible script to work with. she’s so utterly charmless and so goddamn witless. there is literally a scene of her tearing off pages from p&p while standing in front of pemberley, having a mental breakdown because “darcy is being mean!!!!1″

even a minor austen fan would do better than she does, and she’s supposed to be an obsessed connoisseur. basically she’s a caricature of an austen fan who 1. knows very little about the actual novels and the historical context (she often acts out of place because she has nooo damn clue how georgian/regency society works - and sometimes you wouldn’t even need to have a clue, it’s just common sense, but homegirl stubbornly makes modern references and expects the bennets and everyone else to just get jiggy with it) and 2. mostly flails over darcy and his perfection, ignoring what actually makes him interesting as a character. meh. 

but it’s not enough that she makes no effort to understand/fit into the society she’s landed in. she also has to be very crass and rude. every other scene she says something offensive or bursts wildly into rooms and screams at people (???), throws hissy fits out of nowhere and wigs out because her beloved p&p is not supposed to be like this *waaah*. she’s just a mess. and that’s the trope they’re going for. darcy falls for her precisely because she’s such an “adorable” mess. meanwhile, real elizabeth is in modern-day england, having a blast (wish we got that series instead) and generally not feeling very keen on returning to 1811. so amanda is kind of a stand-in for lizzy, which GOD.

it’s basically the same as saying, “lizzy = amanda = winona ryder from reality bites”. which i suppose is due, in part, to these folks watching the 2005 p&p and seeing keira knightley being all rebellious and tomboyish. and yeah, that movie goes overboard with how bonnet-less and “free” their lizzy is, but this adaptation completely jumps the shark and claims that elizabeth bennet is every 90s quirky rom-com heroine to ever throw a snippy line at the male love interest. WHICH. GRRR. lizzy, though a wonderful heroine, is distinct. she’s not an archetype, she’s distinguishable from other female characters, imo. she’s a separate human being. she also observes conventions and decorum, she is a product of her time. jfc, she’s not gloria steinem. furthermore, canon!darcy would find 90s jaded rom-com heroine quite off-putting, especially the way amanda plays her, all crass and vulgar. darcy would not find a loose mouth refreshing. he’d find it common and frankly boring. there were ppl like amanda in those times, who, while not applying her vocabulary, were inelegant and foolish and no one thought they were adorable.

this isn’t to say they couldn’t have managed to do this well. they could’ve given amanda better characterization, restrained her outbursts and maybe played up the humor, but that’s the problem i keep coming back to. they take themselves so.seriously. amanda is neither particularly fleshed out nor an engaging screwball comedienne, a la lucille ball. she’s flat and crass. and she brings the whole satire down with her.

so whyyy do i say i hate-love Lost in Austen? i mean i rly went to town on the criticism, didn’t i (and i stand by everything i said)? well, it is exactly their failure to be a confident parody that makes this series so hatefully enjoyable. it’s so bad it’s good. now of course, there are some genuine moments i enjoy (there is some good writing here, it’s just soooooo poorly packaged) but for the most part, i adore just how terribly uneven this whole thing is. i laugh even when i’m not supposed to. especially when i’m not supposed to. if you have the curiosity to check them out, the scenes between amanda and darcy are gooold. he literally trembles with emotion and almost cries when amanda confesses to him she’s not a virgin. i shit you not. they have a one-off debate about “buttresses” and it’s supposed to be the height of banter. there’s this uber-dramatic *intense* scene where amanda is like “why are you here??? why did you come???” (they’re at hunsford) and darcy gets this mad glint in his eye like he’s heathcliff on the moor and he grabs her passionately like he’s about to kiss her face off and u see their profiles awkwardly in the firelight and it is HILARIOUS (it’s not meant to be, tho). there are scenes where you’re supposed to be horrified that bingley has succumbed to alcoholism and depression as he wonders around pemberley estate, yearning for jane, and it is uproarious. i literally can’t stop giggling. he PUNCHES darcy in the face! because it’s darcy’s fault he can’t have jane! aaaangst! and lots of laughter.

there are sooo many other great-terrible moments, i would fill up a whole blog and probably never do them justice. u just gotta see it to believe it. in a way i’m grateful that england is kooky enough that it allows shit like this to exist.

 but yeah, i think this is a failed parody-satire, and yet its failure is worth watching? it’s like that documentary about the process of making apocalypse now. idk, i’m not a hater. if you go into it by removing the notion that it is supposed to be connected to p&p, you will derive a lot of joy from it. 

(YUP, this is what i do instead of writing my dissertation)

[mrmichaelchadler]

Disobedience

"Disobedience," Sebastián Lelio’s follow-up to his 2017 Oscar-winning film "A Fantastic Woman," and his first English-language film, starts with a Rabbi giving a sermon about free will. He speaks of angels, beasts, and Adam and Eve. He says, fearsomely, that humans are "free to choose." Then he drops dead. There's something refreshing about a story so unconcerned with "subtlety." Put it all out there. Foreground the theme. Underline as you go. "Disobedience," based on Naomi Alderman's novel (with adaptation by Lelio and Rebecca Lenkiewicz) is a good old-fashioned melodrama, albeit with a quieter touch. 

The rabbi who dropped dead was Rav Krushka (Anton Lesser), an important figure in the London Orthodox Jewish community. His daughter Ronit (Rachel Weisz), a New York-based photographer, left years ago. When she returns home, she walks into the unchanged world of her childhood, looked at by relatives and former friends with curiosity and concern. She is rebelliously secular, with long free hair, cigarettes, short leather skirts. The obituary for her father states that "sadly" he had no children. It stings. She's been gone so long she had no idea that Dovid (Alessandro Nivola), taken in by her father as a protégé at 13, and Esti, her childhood friend (Rachel McAdams) have gotten married. There's an awkward moment in the kitchen when she makes the connection. The shock on Weisz's face is eloquent, although we don't know the backstory yet.

The eloquence of the performances is key to the material succeeding, since Lelio does not introduce the characters, and their connections, in a straightforward way. It takes some time before you figure out who Dovid is to Ronit, although from their behavior you can tell they once were close. She forgets herself and almost hugs him in a friendly greeting, and then laughs when he recoils from her touch. Dovid and Esti invite Ronit to stay with them during her time in London. This is playing with fire, since it soon becomes clear that Esti and Ronit had an adolescent romance, well-known to the community at the time. Lelio's approach helps us feel we are thrust into the middle of a very tight-knit community, with a long shared history. Exposition is always awkward, so Lelio doesn't bother with it at all. "Exposition" wouldn't be spoken out loud in this crowd since everyone knows everything about everyone else. Dovid and Etsi don't yet have children. She is a teacher in a girls school and enjoys her work. He is set to step into Rav Krushka's sizable shoes. Ronit's arrival throws everything into confusion. 

This is Lelio's third film in a row about women (the first being 2013's "Gloria"), and he is deeply empathetic to the ways in which repressive societies put women in all kinds of impossible double- and triple-binds. In "A Fantastic Woman," a trans woman fought to be allowed to grieve for her dead lover, and Lelio's focus on the cruelty of the surrounding world pushed the film into a nightmare-scape. He dials this back in "Disobedience." There are no villains. Even the strict culture of Orthodox Judaism isn't really a villain. The culture is shown as a close one, with many social benefits, benefits which Ronit - in leaving - has missed out on. With all of the dramatic and sexual stuff in the film, the best scene may very well be a group scene early on, when Ronit joins Dovid and Esti's Shabbat, attended by a small group of Ronit's relatives. The "mood" at the table is far from friendly or warm, but it's also not toxic. This is a family. Ronit is a lost lamb, but there is still space for her in the fold. A lively debate occurs, and when Esti pops in unexpectedly with a cutting observation, Ronit stares at her from across the table, thrilled. These all feel like real people, not caricatures. (In this way, it reminded me a little bit of Peter Weir's "Witness," where you could see why Rachel didn't just run away with the cop, leaving the Amish world behind. You could see why she wanted to stay, why she had to stay.)

The relationship between Ronit and Esti, past and present, is clearly the focal point of the film, but Lelio takes his time getting there. McAdams is miscast, but she does a fine job showing Esti's burgeoning emotional life, exploding out of her in a rush: it is as though time stopped for her when Ronit fled the community so many years ago. But McAdams is so inherently <i>positive</i>. In a 1950s film, she'd play a perky ingenue. She's wonderful here when showing mischievous delight sneaking a puff off Ronit's cigarette. But when she has to show Esti's anguish at being forced to marry in order to cure her of wanting to sleep with women, she can't get to the depths required. She knows what the depths are, but she can't get there in a way a Lili Taylor, or Elizabeth Moss, or Natalie Portman could. But the scenes between Weisz and McAdams are fascinating, each actress listening closely to the other, paying attention to every nuance. It doesn't reach the scope of Grand Tragic Romance, but then, it isn't meant to. These were two women whose normal adolescent crush was banned. In a way, time stopped for the both of them. 

The colors of the film are subdued and chilly, all blacks, greys, smoky-blues, so that at times it looks like a black-and-white photograph. It's beautiful, in a classical and formal way. "A Fantastic Woman" featured many surreal dreamlike images, but Lelio plays this one straight. So straight, though, it is sometimes a detriment. It's the kind of movie where teachers are shown giving lectures which directly comment on the action of the movie. Dovid and his young rabbinical students discuss sensuous love and its importance, and Esti discusses "Othello" with her students. In one scene in "A Fantastic Woman," Aretha's "(You Make Me Feel Like) a Natural Woman" is prominently featured, and in a scene in "Disobedience," to break an awkward silence with Esti, Ronit spins the dial on the radio and stops on The Cure's "Love Song," which just so happens to narrate perfectly the emotions of the moment. These obvious choices really stick out.

Pauline Kael observed that melodrama is "the chief vehicle for political thought in our films," which you can see time and again, particularly in films made before the 1950s. In literature, melodrama can come off as overblown, preachy, way "too much." But cinema can make melodrama seem not just real, but urgent and relevant. "Disobedience" could have gone even further in the direction of "Stella Dallas"-melodrama torment. Some of it comes across as curiously low-stakes, considering the circumstances. But, in a way, that's refreshing too.

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