Disobedience

Front Row at the Movies by Shirrel Rhoades

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As Tom Wolfe said, “You can’t go home again.” But people do. And for all kinds of reasons.

They leave for all kind of reasons too.

In “Disobedience,” a film based on the same-named novel by Naomi Alderman, we meet Ronit, an Orthodox Jew who left her home in London when a teenage romance with a female school friend was discovered.

Now a successful photographer in New York, she’s forced to return to the community that shunned her when her rabbi father dies. There, Ronit (Rachael Weisz) encounters Esti (Rachel McAdams), her childhood friend. Esti has married Ronit’s cousin David (Alessandro Nivola), but the passion between them is still smoldering.

The first English-language film by Chilean director Sebastián Lelio, “Disobedience” is currently screening at Tropic Cinema.

Actress Rachael Weisz optioned “Disobedience,” producing the film as well as co-starring in it. “I was looking for a story to tell where a woman could be in relationship to another woman,” she says. “I think almost every story I’ve ever told I’ve been in a relationship with a man. And I discovered this novel. It seemed to be something very contemporary but set within a community that was just up the road from where I grew up in North London, where being gay, being homosexual, being a lesbian is taboo.”

Weisz herself is Jewish, but not Orthodox. “This is a huge existential conundrum. What do you do if you’re Orthodox, and you want to express your gay sexuality?”

Rachel Weisz is expecting a child by husband Daniel Craig later this year. It will be the first for the couple — each of whom has a child from a previous relationship.

Rachel McAdams has a son by boyfriend Jamie Linden.

McAdams adds, “I knew we were telling a lesbian story and that was necessary to concentrate on, but beyond that it’s just humans being with humans … I didn’t think of it as gay versus straight, only in that there was unfair oppression of their love and sexuality….”

Email Shirrel: srhoades@aol.com