Emma Seligman
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Developed from an eight-minute short, Shiva Baby is the 26-year-old Seligman’s first feature, and falls into the same modern strain of Jewish breakneck-anxiety comedy as the Coen brothers’ A Serious Man, Darren Aronofsky’s Mother!, and the Safdie brothers’ Uncut Gems. It lacks those films’ cosmically tragicomic scope: Danielle’s various mishaps and humiliations feel more like an assault course set for her by a screenwriter than the cruel whims of an incomprehensible universe.
It's one of the funniest films of the year, but also the most frenzied and toe-curling cinema release since the Safdie brothers gave Uncut Gems to the world.
Uncut Gems was about the anxieties of which way a wager’s going to go, and of a character juggling a dozen scams at the same time. Shiva Baby is about something lower stakes but arguably even more anxiety-inducing- an afternoon in close quarters with a houseful of your Jewish relatives, especially when you’re trying to keep a secret or two.
Sweeney’s contrasts between straight and gay friends gear more towards recent raunchy queer comedies like Bottoms, Bros, or Booksmart.
Emma Seligman (Shiva Baby, Bottoms)…
Emma Seligman (Shiva Baby, Bottoms)…
The less obvious but more accurate comparisons are to The Girlfriend Experience and Uncut Gems and Shiva Baby.
Along with the fact that this type of character, unsure how to move forward at this point in their life) is typically now only seen in TV (Fleabag, Girls), it's refreshing to find it in a film (I hate to break it to you Judd Apatow, but The King of Staten Island didn't feel anywhere near as enjoyable as Shiva Baby).