What began its life as a short film in 2018, Emma Seligman’s directorial feature debut Shiva Baby is an experiment in trapping its audience unknowingly in a 78-minute-long panic attack. Set at a shiva of someone she only kind of knew, Danielle, a directionless college student, finds herself confined in a claustrophobic mess of prying family members, high school ex-girlfriends and sugar daddies.
From the pun of a title to the anxiety-inducing trailer, the build-up to this film’s release was one of excited tension, and one that seemed to go on forever. Although premiering online in 2020 at South by Southwest film festival, Shiva Baby’s first public screenings were at the Toronto Film Festival later in the year. And although its official release in cinemas was early April of 2021 in the US, us measly cinemagoers down under in Australia are only just now, in August, seeing first glimpses of its release.
Sitting in the theatre of an advanced screening in Melbourne, I had little idea of what all of us theatre attendees were getting ourselves in for. The horror movie-like score and claustrophobically tight shots that were fed like breadcrumbs to us in the trailer, along with some snapshots of reviews I’d seen online, made me wonder if this film were more thriller in genre than comedy-drama. And with the adrenaline pumping through my bloodstream and my hand continuously flying up to my mouth in shock, I’m tempted to describe Shiva Baby as a thriller. The tension that was built over the course of the film, as Danielle arrives at the shiva to be bombarded with questions regarding her romantic life, her career and her weight by relations she only seems to sort of know, it felt like me and everyone else in the cinema were watching a giant helium balloon slowing stretching to its capacity, knowing any minute it could, and would, explode.
First running into her ex-girlfriend, Maya, a successful law student, Danielle is confronted with the reality that her college diploma, when forced to explain it to this group of old sticky-beaks, is something to do with gender-business-girlboss-entrepreneur. It’s not a career, she snaps at her parents, “it’s a lens!”
And the skin of the balloon only stretches even tighter when Danielle’s sugar daddy, Max, shows up with his crying baby and his gorgeous wife. There are moments in these scenes that are bursting with tension to the brim, so that whenever something even remotely funny happened, like a look across the room of dumbfounded confusion between Max and Danielle of why are you here, the entire cinema burst with laughter. Threaded throughout every scene, only aided and accentuated by the nails-on-chalkboard score, is suspension so taut it only took half a joke for all of us to snap into hysterics.
Seligman and Rachel Sennot, who plays Danielle, are able to perform this dance of comedy and tragedy like it’s nobody’s business. As things get more tragic for Danielle over the course of the day spent at this shiva, they only seem to also get funnier, everything in her life seemingly accumulating tension so compact, leading it all to finally implode in front of everyone. This dance is one of hilarity and dramatics, but what makes Shiva Baby so funny yet so anxiety-inducing is the sheer poignant relatability of Danielle’s misfortunes. Her relationships, romantic, professional and familial, are simultaneously slapping her across the face again and again over the course of this film, and her willingness to take the hits is what resonates with Shiva Baby’s audience.
The communal sign of relief that was released upon the credits rolling was so audibly loud in the cinema that it was followed with a communal explosion of laughter. Shiva Baby was a rollercoaster of tension and suspense, and without a doubt, one of hilarity.
Shiva Baby by Emma Sligman: 5/5
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