Disobedience

With an intuitive insight into women's survival instincts, Chilean director Sebastian Lelio builds a powerful portrait of a secret, struggling relationship, fleshed out by two fine performances. Lelio makes his English-language debut with Disobedience, which is based on the novel by Naomi Alderman. As with Lelio's two previous movies -- Gloria and the Oscar-winning Best Foreign Language Film A Fantastic Woman -- this film depicts a complex diorama of pain and longing, a yearning for acceptance but also a bracing for loneliness. Lelio has a sure touch for performance as well as for composition and tone, and the result is an intelligent, emotionally true movie that never steps wrong.

Weisz gives one of her finest performances as the deeply flawed Ronit, who perhaps hoped to have things both ways and is dismayed that her choices may have led to heartbreak. She's not entirely sympathetic, even if her feelings are totally understandable. McAdams is also superb as a woman who escaped in a different way, into the stability of a marriage she doesn't have her whole heart in, simply because she didn't have anywhere else to go. Separately, Esti and Ronit inhabit a chilly, overcast world of houses and rooms and rituals, wandering through in medium-wide shots. But their moments together, of release and confession, are close-up and intimate, as well as breathtaking and profound.