Shiva Baby Is One of the Most Confidently, Winningly Jewish Comedies in Years

Marvelously uncomfortable and cringe-inducingly hilarious, Emma Seligman’s Shiva Baby rides a fine line between comedy and horror that perfectly suits its premise—and feels immediately in step with its protagonist, the college-aged Danielle.

Played by actress/comedian Rachel Sennott, already messy-millennial royalty by virtue of her extremely online comic sensibility, Danielle is first glimpsed mid-tryst, an unconvincing orgasm closing out her perfunctory dirty talk (“Yeah, daddy”) before she dismounts and collects a wad of cash from the older Max (Danny Deferrari).

Though it’s transactional, as any sugar relationship tends to be, Danielle seems open to discussing her nebulous career aspirations with Max, and he gives her an expensive bracelet—suggesting a quasi-intimate familiarity to their dynamic, even if the encounter’s underlying awkwardness keeps either from getting too comfortable. As such, it’s a smart tease of what’s to come, as Danielle schleps from Max’s apartment to meet up with her parents, Debbie (Polly Draper) and Joel (Fred Melamed, naturally), and sit shiva in the home of a family friend or relative. That Danielle’s unclear on who exactly died is a recurring joke, and a consistently good one, but there’s little time to figure out the details before she’s plunged into the event: A disorienting minefield of small talk, thin smiles and self-serve schmear.

An extended wake intended to comfort mourners, the Jewish tradition of sitting shiva is one of several rituals in the faith around grief (see this year’s The Vigil for a separately great Jewish horror film built around another such custom). But anyone who grew up attending them can speak to the social asceticism that often stems from being crowded into a house of bereaved busybodies. Mingling shoulder-to-shoulder with relatives you haven’t seen since the last wedding (or, perhaps more commonly, the last funeral service), sitting shiva can feel like an emotional marathon for reasons entirely unrelated to the deceased.

In Shiva Baby, what writer/director Seligman (who is Jewish) so cleverly isolates is that surreal combination of forced intimacy, pervasive melancholy and honest estrangement native to Jewish family gatherings. The day’s uncomfortable enough for Danielle as she’s peppered with questions about her eating habits, relationship status and job prospects—you can feel her fear building as all the small talk she’s thought to prepare is exhausted within minutes—but it spirals into outright psychological terror once she spots ex-girlfriend Maya (the wonderful, scene-stealing Molly Gordon, for once in a comedy not soundtracked by a Run the Jewels song) and, of all people, sugar daddy Max. Even worse: By his side is the wife she never knew about, “Shiksa princess” Kim (Dianna Agron, of Glee fame), and their wailing newborn.

You don’t have to be Jewish to appreciate the high anxiety and mortifying comedy of Seligman’s film, though it helps. Underneath all the best Jewish punchlines lies a weary acknowledgement of inevitable suffering; the Coen Brothers knew this in crafting A Serious Man, their riotous retelling of the Book of Job, and Seligman knows it in Shiva Baby. Laughing through the pain, employing humor as a self-defense mechanism, has long been the prerogative of Jewish comedians forced to contemplate the absurd horrors of anti-Semitism, that oldest hatred. In Shiva Baby, Seligman identifies a rather fascinating overlap between Jewish comedic tendencies and the mockery of existential suffering from which millennials draw so much of their own dark humor. When Danielle sees an elderly woman looking over photos from a visit to the Holocaust Museum, she smiles, prematurely accepts the agonizing silence to come and lets out a murmured “You look so…happy.” It’s awful. It’s sublime.

Seligman’s feature debut is an expansion of a previous short film (her thesis, appropriately enough), which explains why, even at 77 minutes, Shiva Baby’s midsection drags, Danielle drifting between overbearing relatives and kvetching elders in an increasingly disassociated state. But this structure only serves to turn the screws more mercilessly on Danielle, as she’s gradually drowned in a sea of familial obligation and romantic entanglement. Overwhelming the audience alongside her is Shiva Baby’s handheld camerawork (by Maria Rusche), which favors extreme close-ups and subtle, quick movements to constantly entrap Danielle.