Tahara (2020)

This week for Mubi Monday we’re going to stay in the comedy realm. In fact, we’ve got another feature directorial debut on our hands this week as well with…Tahara (2020).

Title: Tahara

Director: Olivia Peace

Released: January 25, 2020 (Slamdance Film Festival)

Runtime: 1 hour 18 minutes

Available to stream on: Mubi and Kanopy

Carrie (Madeline Grey DeFreece) and Hannah (Rachel Sennott) are best friends and classmates. Unfortunately, one of their classmates has passed away. Carrie and Hannah attend the funeral with all of their classmates at their synagogue, with a class designed around grief counseling to follow.

Both girls appear to be there to just go through the motions so they can move on with their days. At least, that’s how things start out.

It doesn’t take long for Hannah to lose interest in everything that isn’t her crush, Tristan (Daniel Taveras). Her obsession with Tristan is no secret. She’s gushing over him constantly in conversation and will do whatever necessary to get his attention when he’s around. However, there’s one small problem for Hannah, Tristan wants nothing to do with her.

She remains oblivious to the fact that Tristan has no interest in her and presses on. Wondering if she is a bad kisser, Hannah asks Carrie to kiss her so that she can know for sure. They kiss and Carrie is left feeling some kind of way about it.

Carrie tries to get Hannah to stop talking about Tristan long enough to discuss their kiss but to no avail. Every time she tries, Hannah turns things around so that it’s all about her and/or Tristan.

Will Carrie be able to process these feelings and communicate them to Hannah?

Or will Hannah lose her best friend over an obsession with a boy?

As usual, I went into this not knowing much of anything about it. I was scrolling through the new additions to Mubi and happened to see Rachel Sennott on the thumbnail for Tahara (2020). I was a big fan of Shiva Baby (2020) and she was hilarious in Bottoms (2023), so I was down to give this a shot.

While Sennott still provides her sarcastic humor as Hannah, she isn’t the focal point here. That falls to Madeline Grey DeFreece as Carrie, and she knocks it out of the park.

After the kiss between Carrie and Hannah, things shift, and Carrie becomes the focus. While her best friend is boy crazy and blind to everything else, Carrie is trying to process her true feelings about the funeral of their classmate as well as the feelings she has after kissing Hannah. The slight facial twitches and facial expressions expertly display the turmoil Carrie is faced with. Despite remaining quiet, we can tell there’s a storm brewing within her.

In her feature directorial debut, Peace is able to portray the intricate nuances of teenage friendship and feelings. While I could argue that we needed more time with these characters, having it feel brief helps to make it all feel more real.

Yep, you guessed it, this gets a recommend from me.

If you haven’t seen Tahara (2020) yet, definitely go and give it a watch.

If you have seen Tahara (2020), let me know what you thought of it!

Tell me all about it in the comments below or by reaching out on social media!

As always, you can keep up with everything else I’ve been watching lately over on Letterboxd.