The Most Anxiety-Inducing Comedy In Years
The film is an expansion of Emma Seligman's 2018 short of the same name (currently available to watch for free on Vimeo), which is a fascinating curio, but less than satisfying after seeing what she made next. Produced as a film school thesis project, it doesn't feel like the germ of an idea so much as the film's premise diluted down to its awkward core — being confronted by your secret sugar daddy at a family gathering, your web of lies being torn down as two worlds collide. Prior to that premiering at the 2018 edition of SXSW, Seligman had already started pre-production on this feature-length adaptation, and its evolution from that original idea is nothing short of remarkable. Seligman has spoken about how her primary influences were Gia Coppola's 2013 film Palo Alto and Jewish romantic comedies, but it's actually one of her stated secondary influences whose influence looms largest over the finished product: the work of legendary filmmaker John Cassavetes, in particular his collaborations with Gena Rowlands.
His 1970s run of initially dismissed and now widely revered films such as A Woman Under the Influence and Opening Night feel like touchstones for how Seligman captures the increased paranoia and disconnect of her protagonist. The way the former film depicts its central character's continued discomfort at being amongst crowds, making for an anxious experience without overly relying on hallucinatory imagery, seems to have been loosely lifted from here, albeit with a touch of Roman Polanski's "apartment trilogy" sprinkled in for good measure. As Danielle becomes more and more unnerved by Max's family life, and has to briefly look after his baby under the judging glares of other shiva attendees (presented in unsettling extreme close-up), the ominous way in which she appears to be treated feels like a tongue-in-cheek tribute to the final act of Rosemary's Baby. You couldn't describe Shiva Baby as horror — but Seligman's stylistic influences couldn't be further from the comedies and grounded character dramas which influence her writing. The two contrasting tones work together better than they have any right to, and makes it so describing Shiva Baby as a mere "dark comedy" undersells what the director has managed to accomplish.
The films of director Alex Ross Perry feel like the closest comparison to what Seligman is striving for here. His two most recent collaborations with Elisabeth Moss, Queen of Earth and Her Smell, are similarly paranoid character studies that wear their influences firmly on their sleeves. But whereas a film like Queen of Earth buckles under the weight of its big Polanski influence, successfully aping the style of his early work but offering nothing of substance to make it more than just a keenly realized tribute, Shiva Baby is more effective at outlining its director's distinctive voice. At a stretch, you could even say the way she marries her distinctive comedic sensibilities with stylistic tics associated with '70s social thrillers isn't a million miles away from Jordan Peele's approach to horror filmmaking. A film like Trey Edward Shultz' debut Krisha, another acclaimed SXSW premiere a few years prior, would also make for an interesting double bill — another awkward family gathering built around a paranoid protagonist, punctuated by a chilling score that feels lifted from another genre altogether.
