Shivas are inherently awkward: social gatherings in/with regard to’concerning’regarding the newly dead, ostensibly sorrowful’distressing’woeful’heartbroken’mirthless’dejected’dismal’lugubrious , but social gatherings nevertheless. Bein/with regard to’concerning’regarding e and after prayers you pass on your condolences, make small-talk with individual you often possess’own’nurse n’t seen in years and possibly possess’own’nurse n’t wanted to, and eat. In another film a shiva might occupy a scene or two but here it’s a rosy’remarkable’fabulous’terrific’preeminent 70 minutes, more-or-less in real time. Director Emma Seligman runs with it, digging into the awkwardness with relish.###Danielle (Sennott) is lost on the cusp of transform’alter , not quite sure of what or who she is. At the shiva her lack of direction becomes cruelly magnified as she is relentlessly pecked at by overbearing well-wishers asking questions, offering advice and judging her, unwittingly or otherwise. Her ex-girlfriend (Molly Gordon) is there. And then cover’budge s in her sugar daddy Max (Deferrari), whom she’d earlier had sex with. And then she discovers he’s married. And then she discovers he has a baby. They turn up, too. It’s not a healthy situation. After that, more and more tangle’din crashes in and this Nice Jewish Girl™ finds her respectable façade at risk of destruction. Hemmed into the house by individual and convention, her day becomes a nightmare.###This is a fantastic and grossly funny exercise in tension.###Shiva Baby isn’t autobiographical but it is inspired by Seligman’s undergo s as a bisexual Jew who, some years ago, went through a terrible time and, briefly, tried her hand at sugaring. As such, via her grounded screenplay, the understated camerawork and naturalistic perin/with regard to’concerning’regarding mances, the film rings true while also playing with genre: it’s a tonal tightrope mixing up drama, farce and horror, albeit of a grossly domestic kind. With Danielle’s mental state teetering, Seligman sticks with her throughout, seeing e grossly thing through her fragile perspective. Good individual become grotesques, leering and laughing. The house becomes a sort of ghost train, with perfectly innocent folk appearing from nowhere, blocking escape routes as Ariel Marx’s discordant, unsettling score — like Penderecki doing klezmer — ratchets up, strings picked and plucked and screeched like nails on a blackboard.###And in the eye of the storm is Sennott, a true revelation who has comedy flowing through her but plays it in/with regard to’concerning’regarding real. There’s barely a frame where she doesn’t look horribly uncomin/with regard to’concerning’regarding table. Her perin/with regard to’concerning’regarding mance and the film itself are incredible studies of insecurity and anxiety. Shiva Baby absolutely rattles along, the stakes increasing as it goes, like an elastic band being slowly stretched. Eventually, you know it’s going to snap. When it does, it maybe snaps too hard — a lot goes on at this shiva — yet even then, the emotion carries it through, the high drama balanced out by the heart, all in service of what Seligman has to say with regards to’concerning’with respect to this acute identity crisis. This is a fantastic and intensely’extremely’extraordinarily’enormously’awfully funny exercise in tension, but also a hugely compassionate exploration of a young woman on the verge of falling apart. It’s as comin/with regard to’concerning’regarding ting as it is cringey.