Over the past several years, grief and trauma have seemingly become ubiquitous subjects in American film, serving as core themes in everything from the latest Marvel extravaganzas to works of elevated horror and indie dramas. That’s perhaps unsurprising in a time when new national and global tragedies seem to occur at an ever-accelerating pace. But many of these films tend to reductively view these emotions as so overwhelming and all-consuming that they present them from within a cinematic vacuum, where characters’ trauma dictates their every last reaction and decision. Following a group of Jewish teens during and after the funeral of one of their classmates, Samantha, who has committed suicide, Olivia Peace’s frequently funny, tender slice-of-life debut, Tahara, takes a decidedly different approach, eliding the debilitating aspects of grief to instead home in on the performative aspects it can spur on, as well as focus on how the irrepressible, self-absorbed, and oversized teenage feelings of self-doubt, alienation and, of course, horniness can often dwarf those of sorrow and loss.
Tahara’s main characters are lifelong besties Carrie (Madeline Grey DeFreece) and Hannah (Shiva Baby’s Rachel Sennott), who, like the dozen or so other classmates that attend an extended post-funeral grief-counseling session at their school’s synagogue, didn’t really know the deceased girl all that well. Even those who did know Samantha didn’t particularly care for her, leaving the kids wondering less about the meaning of life than what they’re supposed to get out of the uncomfortable group therapy they’re stuck in all afternoon. The tension between how they all actually feel about this tragedy and how they’re supposed to be feeling is a driving force of Peace’s film. And in a brisk 77 minutes, Tahara explores the mostly unhealthy, yet completely understandable, coping mechanisms that the teens embrace as their egotistical impulses run up against a situation where selflessness and mourning are presented as the only acceptable responses.
Hannah, for instance, spends most of the film lusting after the dreamy Tristan (Daniel Taveras), awkwardly seeking his attention by trying out different personae to see which one might catch his eye. Although Carrie grows increasingly annoyed by Hannah’s inappropriate moves on Tristan, she’s left with her own burgeoning sexual confusion that bubbles to the surface after sharing a practice kiss with Hannah and realizing that her own feelings for her bestie may extend beyond the confines of pure friendship. On the surface, this may not be a particularly novel teen love triangle, but Peace wrings it for a surprising amount of genuine pathos and cringe humor thanks in large part to the lived-in performances by Sennott and newcomer DeFreece, who have an effortless rapport with one another.
While the film’s central relationship flourishes, the two girls’ classmates never quite transcend their stereotypical trappings. Elaina (Shlomit Azoulay) and Melissa (Jenny Lester) are prototypical teacher’s pets milking this opportunity to suck up to their instructor (Bernadette Quigley), while the two Rachels (Melissa Juliet Lawson, Ellie Anthony) rarely take a break from making a show of their tears despite admitting to barely knowing Samantha. The two outcast friends, Zack (Keith Weiss) and Natalie (Rachel Wender), get the most laughs out of all these fringe characters, as they struggle to make it through the day with the help of some potent pot brownies when Zack’s incessant need to share flat-earther videos leads to a string of failed attempts at drawing others into his conspiracy-driven worldview.
Although these secondary characters remain mostly two-dimensional, they do help lend a specificity and singular cultural color to the Jewish milieu that Carrie and Hannah inhabit, while also conveying a variety of ways that falsely enhanced expressions of bereavement can be used to surreptitiously garner social cachet. If Tahara sounds a bit callous in this respect, it’s fortunately never flippant about death nor suicide. Rather, it explores the very distinctive ways that traumatic situations can land on young people who are inevitably wrapped up in their own little dramas which, in the throes of teenage emotional overload, quite literally take on life-or-death importance.
Photo courtesy of Film Movement
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