Structure is everything in the Emma Seligman’s feature directorial debut, “Shiva Baby”. Danielle, a liberal-arts undergrad struggling with adjusting to the demands of adulthood and the imminent “real-world” of postgraduation is thrust into a day of misadventures. In the sharp, uncomfortable comedy, a shiva – a Jewish post-funeral ritual – becomes the setting for a series of increasingly awkward and unwanted clashes. Danielle is dragged to the shiva, unsure of how she knows the deceased, by her well-meaning and hectoring parents. At the shiva, she must fend off the enquiries about her major, her intended career, avoid her ex-girlfriend (who everyone knows about), avoid her current sugar-daddy (who no one knows about) and grapple with his wife and new baby (who she doesn’t know about). All this while trying to navigate the requisite contrition in mourning for the deceased.
Except for a few opening scenes, most of “Shiva Baby” takes place in and outside a suburban house where the shiva is being held. The setting is an essential dramatic and structural tool that establishes the central crisis for Danielle – she is trapped. There’s a knowing perversion to trapping the protagonist at a shiva. The post-funeral rites turn into a teasing symbol of Danielle’s own funeral. Except rather than just a body, Danielle has her entire life and mental stability to mourn for.
Like any comedy depending on unfortunate situations and realisations, “Shiva Baby” delights in the build-up. As each new character is introduced (or reintroduced), revealing a different facet of Danielle’s bad-luck, “Shiva Baby” gets tenser and more uncomfortable. For much of the film we stay with Rachel Sennott’s Danielle, who must navigate through a series of specific emotions that carry the emotional crisis of the film. This kind of cringe-adjacent comedy depends on a performance rooted in no self-consciousness and Sennott is expertly attuned to the demands of Seligman’s dramatic intentions here. Each successive scene strips away at the illusion of a well-adjusted young adult that the opening scene teases us with. But it’s not a maladjustment that is source for mockery. Instead, as “Shiva Baby” invites us into the bathetic reality of Danielle’s life, Seligman (she writes and directs the film) walks a fine line by encouraging us to wince at Danielle’s own lack of self-awareness but empathise with her penchant for bad decision making.
What turns “Shiva Baby” into something even sharper is the way that Seligman does not root her comedy in the script but in precise filmmaking. When we talk about world-building in films, especially recently, we talk about it in the context of sci-films or fantasy work that have a responsibility to make us believe in worlds that we have not experienced. But world-building is just as vital in films which aim for elements of realism, and what’s astonishing about the “Shiva Baby” is the effectiveness of that world-building in a mere 77 minutes. There’s no second wasted here, but it’s even more significant that the brief running time does not affect what feels like a fulsome and distinct story.
Seligman understands these characters but she also understands this place and she uses that knowledge alongside the camerawork to upend our expectations. And Maria Rusche’s cinematography and Hanna A. Park’s editing are great assets. By the time we have met all the players at the halfway point, the camera begins to do a kind of dance through the cast – avoiding certain figures, and following others. By the last third of the movie, the camerawork moves from teasingly exploitative into something like a thriller and then horror. We are afraid to watch, and the camera keeps seeking out sequences that feel scarier with each passing moment. It’s a slow-build to tension that is propulsive and kinetic.
It’s a mark of good comedy that “Shiva Baby” gets better – more incisive, more nerve-wracking, more thoughtful – as it goes on. Its premise might suggest a comedy that depends on the awkward ingenuity of its set-up, but in each successive scene it shifts into something that resists flatness. There’s a sharp resistance to ironic detachment, even as Danielle retreats into her own self-effacing tendencies – Seligman is mocking but not unkind. Even as the film hews close to Danielle’s perspective, Seligman is smart enough to separate that disillusionment from the film’s own point-of-view aesthetically or psychologically. It means that, the film really does engage in a study of her character in a dissection that is persistently rewarding but also incredibly thoughtful.
There’s no sense of carelessness or ad-hoc construction here. Instead, “Shiva Baby” is defined by a rewarding intentionality and specificity, especially amidst so much of contemporary comedy that typically throws as many potential options against a wall to see what sticks. Even as the chance encounters of this terrible shiva defines Danielle’s day, Seligman’s work here is defined by how well-thought out it is. And just when you think it’s too perverse for its own good, she saves the most earnest and promising scene for the very end, while still mining the foibles of these characters to good effect. It’s a charming and precise triumph of comedy.
Shiva Baby is available for streaming and on-demand via Prime Video, iTunes, and other streaming platforms.
