The 23rd annual Tribeca Film Fest, which took place in June, offered a number of Jewish-themed movies and documentaries, on subjects ranging from fashion to a late in life Bat Mitzvah. The half dozen films featured a starry line up, including Diane von Fürstenberg Stephen Fry and Elizabeth Taylor.
In Bad Shabbos, winner of the festival’s Audience Award, it’s Friday night on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, where the Jewish, recently engaged, people pleaser David (John Bass) is about to introduce the visiting parents of his non-Jewish fiancée Meg (Meghan Leathers) to his assembled family. Longstanding tension between the very particular, exacting Ellen (Kyra Sedgwick) and her exceedingly patient, future daughter-in-law (over Meg not being of the faith despite the fact that she’s converting) is just one of the conflicts going on. Tightly wound daughter Abby (Milana Vayntrub), is fighting with her obnoxious boyfriend Benjamin (Ashley Zukerman), a guy she should have broken up with weeks before. He constantly harasses her maladjusted and socially awkward brother Adam (Theo Taplitz), Ellen and Richard’s (David Paymer) youngest child. Adam lives at home, coddled by Ellen (she reserves her sharp criticisms for her other children while Adam benefits from rationalizing) and easygoing David, who prefers to parent and resolve disagreements via lessons he’s picked up from the latest books he’s reading. Into the mix is Jordan (Cliff “Method Man” Smith), the beloved building doorman, friend of the family and pals with “the man”, Richie.
Before the guests are due, there’s an accidental death, followed by escalating, comedic frenzy as each person discovers the body and then, tries to create and carry out a plan to get rid of the body ahead of Meg’s parents John (John Bedford Lloyd) and Beth’s (Catherine Curtin) impending arrival. While everyone is panicked, both about body, trying to conduct a Shabbos meal and make a good impression, the unruffled Jordan (Method Man hilariously acquits himself in the role) goes really beyond his duties.
Directed by Daniel Robbins and co-written by Robbins and Zach Weiner, it’s a murder mystery almost as frothy as a vanilla egg cream. It’s breezy and a little too slapsticky, but the strong comedy ensemble elevates it. It’s great to have Sedgwick leading a movie again and seeing Paymer reminded me that I really wish he worked more regularly. I appreciated that there were actual Jewish actors playing the stereotypical, judgey and nebbishy Jewish parent moments.
Bad Shabbos will be on HBO later this year.
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If you have a little bit of interest in high fashion, then you probably have a passing familiarity with the bestselling Wrap Dress, an item still highly coveted a half-century after it first appeared on runways and in stores. But even if designer clothes aren’t your thing, it’s almost impossible to not have heard of the former Princess, doyenne of the 70s and 80s New York night life scene and one-time gal pal of Warren Beatty, Richard Gere and Mick Jagger, that is industry icon Diane von Fürstenberg, who gets the documentary treatment in Diane von Furstenberg: Woman In Charge, directed by Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy and Trisha Dalton. What you may not fully grasp, however, is what a pioneer she has been: as a young woman, an immigrant, and the obstacles she faced as the rare female in the room. She was a business novice (dressed very feminine in high heels and fishnet stockings) in a sea of business suit-clad men at a time when a woman didn’t legally have the right to get a credit card or open a checking account in her own name. Von Fürstenberg created an empire, that three-letter logo recognized around the world. And you may also not know that she is the daughter of a Holocaust survivor.
Born in Brussels in 1946, 18 months after her mother Lily, a Resistance member, was liberated from Auschwitz, Diane (“Dee-Ahn”) Halfin’s next three-quarters of a century would be defined by the lessons (and the trauma) imparted by her mother. “When I came home from school, my first thought was, ‘how is my mother?’ I was never a child,” she explains of what her mother carried with her from the War. Not one to be restricted by the expectations of her time, Lily left her husband and family and started a new life with her second husband. When Diane was afraid of the dark, her mother locked her in the closet, teaching her that the dark was not a constant and was nothing to be frightened of. This was a way of thinking Diane adopted for life: to “not be a victim. Fear is not an option”. Instead, she thrived on freedom and independence.
While apprenticing with Angelo Ferretti (famous for making jersey t-shirt dresses in the late 60s) in his factory, she got her first big idea, taking inspiration from the tops ballet dancers would wear at practice. Unexpectedly pregnant, she became a bride (to Egon) and mother at 22, marrying into the German von Fürstenberg family, one her disapproving father-in-law told an interviewer, would, for the “first time in nine centuries, have Jewish blood”. Such is the dichotomy that is von Fürstenberg that she, a dark-haired, dark-eyed middle-class child of a Holocaust survivor would marry into Über German royalty.
It was, funnily enough, while she was watching one of Nixon’s daughters defending her father at a press conference and saw how the young woman paired one of von Fürstenberg’s tops with a matching skirt, that her multi-million dollar light bulb went on. The jersey wrap dress, which retailed then for $86, was the dress that everyone, from housewives to working women, including a young journalist named Oprah Winfrey, had to have at least one of, if not multiples. She quickly was selling 25,000 of them every week.
Not surprisingly, along with those highs, there have been serious lows professionally and personally, including missing much of her children’s early years, and the death of her ex-husband from AIDS. In her current act, a grandmother, wife of media mogul Barry Diller, former president of the Council Of Fashion Designers Of America and fashion titan, von Fürstenberg is focused on building a legacy for young, female change-makers, and on embracing aging – “You shouldn’t say how old you are,” she declares, not shy about showing her thighs dotted with freckles and sun damage. “You should say how long have you lived. If you take all the wrinkles away, the map of your life is different. I don’t want to erase anything from my life.”
Obaid-Chinoy and Dalton present a captivating look at an honest, flawed and lucky woman who has some regrets but doesn’t apologize for what she’s done or how she’s chosen to live. Diane von Furthenberg: Woman In Charge is a refreshing and illuminating portrait, available now on Hulu.
****Honourable mentions to selections I didn’t get to see at the Fest.
The documentary Elizabeth Taylor: The Lost Tapes (available on HBO Aug. 3) comes out of tapes found among journalist Richard Meryman’s archives. The film, directed by Nanette Burstein, takes audiences from the early days of Taylor’s career to her years with Richard Burton after her union with Eddie Fisher and conversion in 1959 to Judaism, with her voice narrating the soundtrack of her life. The drama Treasure (available On Demand and soon on Amazon Prime), based on the novel Too Many Men by Lily Brett and directed by Julia von Heinz, is about a father (Stephen Fry), a Holocaust survivor, returning to Poland in 1990, accompanied by his daughter (Lena Dunham). And finally, helmed by Nathan Silver is Between Two Temples (in theatres Aug. 23), co-written by Silver and C. Mason Wells. The comedy stars Jason Schwartzman as a cantor who suddenly has his grade-school teacher (Kane) as his newest Bat Mitzvah student. Kane, like Paymer, doesn’t work enough so it’s a delight that each back on screen.
