Not yet thirty, and Rachel Sennott, actress and comedian, already has given powerful performances in a number of comedy/dramas. I recently watched Shiva Baby and I Used to Be Funny, both available for streaming on various sites.
Shiva Baby was released in 2020. It was written and directed by Emma Seligman. The plot follows a college-age woman through an afternoon get-together, a somber observance where a group of mainly Jewish people are chattering, gossiping in the home of the grief-stricken family. It’s a post-funeral traditional meeting where Jewish people sit Shiva – a family mourning practice that often goes on for a week. With a more Orthodox group, the family would be sitting on wooden boxes, crying while mourners visit and express their woe.
Not this Shiva gathering! At this home, the spotlight is not on the body that was just buried; it’s on one mourner, a college senior named Danielle, played by Sennott, who doesn’t seem affected by the death. There she interacts with the attendees. Her father is a weak-willed shlemiel who allows his wife to insult him endlessly. The mother doesn’t spare Danielle either. She treats her like a naughty child in front of friends, casting judgments on her daughter’s sex life (as she thinks she knows it), her look, plans, and lifestyle, and obnoxiously pushes her to eat at the banquet table. Unfortunately, the mother is an all-too-common negative stereotype of a suburban Jewish woman. She doesn’t care whose feelings she hurts.
Soon Danielle runs into a woman with whom she has been having an affair. Then the bomb drops; she runs into her current male lover and , whoa!, he has a wife and baby! The camera flows through the rooms of the house as Danielle goes from one frazzled moment to another. Rachel Sennott is brilliant as Danielle. The camera hardly allows us to take our eyes off her, and that’s fine. She dominates.
More recently, Sennott’s film I Used to Be Funny from 2023 was released to streaming. It’s a Canadian production written and directed by Ally Pankiw. Once again, Sennott dominates. She plays Sam, a stand-up comic who takes a job as an au pair to a young teenager. Then we see Sam as she is going through an emotional ordeal, a breakdown. It wouldn’t be fair to share any more of the story because the events unfold in an unusual manner. There is an aura of mystery to Sam’s situation.
Both films are low budget independent productions that rely on the strength of the characters and their dialog to hold the interest of the audience. There are no expensive production values or effects. There are no Hollywood stars, and the scenes play out in very few locations.
Shiva Baby’s writer/director Emma Seligman followed up with a feature called Bottoms, a comedy starring and cowritten by Sennott, which won a number of awards and has recently begun steaming on multiple sites.
Both Pankiw and Seligman are creating quality TV and film product. I’m looking forward to seeing new films of theirs as they become available. Rachel Sennott is in a new film directed by Jason Reitman titled Saturday Night about the opening show of Saturday Night Live on October 11, 1975.
Audrey Kupferberg is a film and video archivist and retired appraiser. She is lecturer emeritus and the former director of Film Studies at the University at Albany and co-authored several entertainment biographies with her late husband and creative partner, Rob Edelman.
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