These days, it's hard to get excited about anything, but the imminent arrival of a fresh, funny, and sexy movie definitely helps. Enter Shiva Baby, Emma Seligman's hilarious debut feature that stole the show at the Toronto International Film Festival earlier this year. When I tell you that you are not ready...
Comedian Rachel Sennott plays Danielle, an NYU senior who makes some extra cash on the side as a sugar baby. A pro at compartmentalizing her own life, Danielle's got her different personas down: At home, she's a bit of a lost baby; at school, she's a burgeoning feminist thinker with aspirations to get into publishing; with her daddies, she's a sexually empowered woman in control. But when Danielle suddenly runs into her sugar daddy Max (Daniel Deferrari) at a shiva, the traditional Jewish mourning gathering that takes place for seven days after a death, all those facets of her suddenly and brutally. And things get messy.
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The thing is, Danielle doesn't really know what she wants. Her romantic feelings for her once-best friend Maya (Booksmart's Molly Gordon) were dismissed as a "phase," and on the cusp of graduation, she's looking into a scary void of adulthood with nothing to break her fall. A shiva is definitely not the place you want to be processing your coming-of-age woes, but hey, at least there's bagels.
Co-starring Dianna Agron, Fred Melamed and Polly Draper, Shiva Baby will hit theaters and VOD on April 2. If awkward family dynamics, mountains of food, and an amount of Jewish anxiety that would make even Uncut Gems squirm sounds like your thing, check out the full trailer below: