Shiva Baby is a 2020 comedy film directed and written by Emma Seligman, based on a 2018 short of the same name.
The movie depicts Jewish college senior Danielle (Rachel Sennott), who is asked by her overly attentive parents (Polly Draper and Fred Melamed) to attend a Shiva service,note where she runs into her more successful ex-girlfriend Maya (Molly Gordon), her sugar daddy Max (Danny Deferrari), his current wife Kim (Dianna Agron), and their baby Rose. As a result, the shiva becomes extremely stressful — Danielle tries to cope with the overwhelming confusion of it happening while trying to keep her relationship with Max a secret.
Tropes
- And Starring: The title sequence includes "and Dianna Agron".
- Bisexual Love Triangle: Danielle is seeing her sugar daddy Max, but still finds her ex-girlfriend Maya enticing too. She and Max later end things. The final shot implies that she and Maya might get back together, since they're holding hands as they stare at each other smiling.
- Blatant Lies: Danielle's insistence that she "has some interviews coming up".
- Casting Gag: Apparently, casting Dianna Agron as not-Jewish Kim was an in-joke, playing off Agron actually being Jewish and her best-known role being the gentile foil to a Jewish girl. Rachel Sennott is also not Jewish, unlike Agron, which underlines the joke.
- Contrived Coincidence: Max, Danielle's sugar daddy, turns out to be a distant friend of the family through work relationships with her father and is a part of the local Jewish community, so he and Danielle appear at the wake in quick succession.
- Creepy Child: There is a lot you can do with a screaming baby, low lighting, stringed score, and a horror lens.
- Double-Meaning Title: Shiva Baby refers to Rose, the baby inappropriately brought to the shiva whose constant screaming punctuates the relationship stress between her parents, and how Danielle constantly feels infantilized throughout the film. In addition, it's a pun on "sugar baby", Danielle's relationship with Max.
- Extremely Short Timespan: The entire movie takes place over the course of a few hours, opening with Danielle on her way to Shiva and ending with Danielle leaving.
- The "Fun" in "Funeral": A comedy movie set on a Shiva (a Jewish period of mourning).
- Genre-Busting: The film is a comedy but is often shot and edited like a horror film, to put the audience in the lead's headspace.
- Jewish Mother: Danielle's mom is a stereotypical demanding, hard to satisfy, Jewish mother that often complains about and to her daughter, frustrated with her life choices and current status. However, when Danielle becomes genuinely upset, she also comforts her and tells her not to worry.
- Making Love in All the Wrong Places:
- Meal Ticket: Max is Danielle's sugar daddy, while she's on a site that hooks up sugar babies with them as well. They end this arrangement later though.
- The Mistress: Unbeknownst to her, Danielle's sugar daddy Max not only is married, but has a child, which shocks her, realizing that she's inadvertently been this for some time. Later it comes out when his wife Kim is nearby.
- No Bisexuals: Discussed as Danielle's mom says she thought she'd finished "experimenting" by dating women along with men, to which Danielle makes it clear that she's bisexual.
- Old Flame: Maya is Danielle's ex-girlfriend, to whom she is always negatively compared. Through the movie, they slowly start to warm up to one another. They're all but back together at the end.
- Punny Title: The title is a play on words, with "Shiva" (the event where the movie takes place) and "Sugar Baby" (Danielle's relationship to Max and her source of income).
- R-Rated Opening: The film opens on Danielle having sex loudly on the couch with her sugar daddy Max, though it's not explicit (but does show her topless from the back and side after).
- Scare Chord: These are used all throughout the film to symbolize Danielle's increasing anxiety over the strong awkwardness of running into her ex Maya and other things.
- Shiksa Goddess: Kim, the "shiksa princess" wife of the Jewish Max, is contrasted against his Jewish sugar baby Danielle.
- Slut-Shaming: Maya calls Danielle a "fuckin' whore" after finding out she's a sugar baby.
- We Do Not Know Each Other: Played with.
- Danielle and Max pretend to only vaguely know one another after participating at the same event together one time, awkwardly trying to maintain the lie (or start deliberately unraveling it) with different people.
- Danielle also tried to downplay her relationship with Maya in front of Max, but that just makes Maya want to emphasize it more.
