Night at the Museum (2006)

A messy millennial in an on-and-off relationship with liminal job prospects has been a saturated archetype since Lena Dunham stretched it to its limit for 5 years in her series Girls. It has been haphazardly recreated in many character study-esque television series and tries to worm its way in as b-plots in coming-of-age films.

Occasionally it demonstrates the nuanced fragmentation of love in a confusing world of blurred relationship boundaries and dying hopes in the gig economy. More often it gets reduced to shallow deep-fakes of toxic relationships with graphics of text bubbles and blaming the woman at the center of the narrative for her poor choice in a partner.

The female-fronted film Shiva Baby takes a fresh perspective on the trope that mirrors experience and compels emotion in this dizzying dark comedy.

The film follows down-on-her-luck college graduate Danielle’s (Rachel Sennott) day at a shiva featuring her obliviously overbearing parents, bubbies with invasive advice, and her manic ex-girlfriend. Oh, also her sugar daddy — plus his wife and baby she wasn’t informed about. (For the goyim who don’t know, a “shiva” is a 7-day mourning period after a funeral. Basically a week-long after-party for the living without any of the fun but plenty of the snacks.) While that sounds like a somber setting to explain the evolutions of romantic, sexual, and familial relationships, a confined space for the grieving is actually perfect in expressing the restrictive ideas of elders and the frightening idea of being static in one’s life. The deliberate editing and camerawork juxtapose this in an anxiety-provoking way, with abrupt cuts and head-nodding shakes, that often places you in the scene and leaves your brain viscerally rattled by experiencing her anxiety second-hand.