Directed by Olivia Peace
Written by Jess Zeidman
Starring Rachel Sennott, Madeline Grey DeFreece, and Bernadette Quigley
Runtime: 1 hour and 15 minutes
Available in theaters starting June 10th

by Emily Maesar, Staff Writer

“Sometimes it’s painful to be inarticulate.”

Tahara opens with perhaps the biggest punch in the gut I’ve felt in a long time, and it continues to be, rather quietly, the exact kind of film I love. It’s a film about death, friendship, and the complicated relationships that teenagers have with both themselves, and the people closest to them.

Set over the course of a single day, the film is about two best friends who attend the funeral of one of their former Hebrew school classmates, after she’s committed suicide. Carrie (Madeline Grey DeFreece) and Hannah (Rachel Sennott) have been best friends since they were children, but as the funeral, the service after, and the grief talk by their teacher (Bernadette Quigley) all play out, Carrie realizes that Hannah is much more manipulative than she ever thought. And that their friendship might be ending, because of Carrie’s complicated and romantic feelings for her that aren’t reciprocated. 

And it’s that relationship, the messy friendship mixed with romantic feelings, that makes Tahara the type of film made specifically for me. It’s gotta be my favorite genre of films about teenage girls, even without the talk about death and sucide as the inciting incident. Hannah makes out with a holy text, before dropping it loudly, during the service, she has Carrie make out with her in the bathroom because she’s obsessed with the question of if she’s a good kisser, and she proposes a threesome between her, Carrie, and Tristian (Daniel Taveras) which goes… nowhere and ultimately ruins her friendship and shot with the guy. 

Carrie, present for all of Hannah’s aforementioned madness, also finds out that Hannah went to a party without her. It’s the party where Samantha (right before her death) asked her out, Hannah rejected her, and then told everyone that it had happened. Well, everyone but Carrie. And once the threesome question is brought up, Carrie realizes that, despite their friendship and the chemistry she felt both times they made out that day, Hannah simply doesn’t like her “that way.” And it is this scene, this realization, that is the catalyst for the opening quote. The whole story, of course, is filled with Carrie and Hannah not being able to really articulate what they want, but this is the turning point for both of them. 

During their fight in the library Carrie calls Hannah selfish, and there’s not a better way to describe her. She’s chaotic in the way that, if this were a film from the 2010s, we’d pretend was charming. However, Sennott commits to the utter unlikability of the character. But I think she also does a great job of making her an understandable one. She can’t stop thinking about hooking up with Tristian, which comes off as a boy-crazy teenage girl stereotype, but I think it’s much more than that. Like, perhaps it’s because she’s a compulsively selfish person, as proven by her not telling Carrie about the party and what happened with Samantha. But have we considered that she’s also completely terrified of losing Carrie, but simply doesn’t know how to channel that fear because she’s a messy teenage girl - like many of us have been. And I think Sennott does a great job at playing the multitudes of that experience.

Which isn’t to say that DeFreece doesn’t knock it out of the park, too, because she absolutely does. Carrie’s just a different kind of messy teenage girl, the kind many of us have also been. When confronted with choices Hannah has made, and then continues to make over the course of the day, Carrie finds herself realizing that the person she loved is simply not who she thought. It’s a hard, painful, and deeply emotional thing to go through, and DeFreece plays it so beautifully with soft subtlety that has me aching to see her in more. 

And then there’s the technical aspects of Tahara, which ultimately really add to the emotionality of the story. The entire film is presented (with one exception) in 1:1 with letterboxing. At first, it seems like just an odd, but ultimately interesting, way to present the film. So much of the character introductions are done like they’re Instagram posts, after all. But as other elements get introduced, like the small bits of animation, it becomes obvious when Carrie and Hannah kiss and the screen goes into full screen for a brief moment, that the 1:1 was really about this moment. It’s a creative choice that serves the emotionality of Carrie in the film, and I think it works beautifully. Plus, the animation I mentioned is a really lovely addition that shows how both girls feel, particularly during kisses - both real and imagined. Hannah’s animation is 2D, while Carrie’s is 3D, clay animated. I think the distinction is a really lovely one that can mean a myriad of things. Hannah’s shallow, her kisses are the fake ones that she only imagines, while Carrie’s are the real ones that have weight and real world emotionality to them - but ultimately aren’t real because Hannah doesn’t feel the same. It’s a really clever and interesting way to do mixed media, and I think it works so, so well. 

Tahara is short, less than 90 minutes total, but it packs a masterful punch.  If Jennifer’s Body is the horror story of female friendship in adolescence, with lots of sexuality thrown in, then Tahara is the quiet, personal drama version of the very real type of relationship that many sapphics have with their friends. It’s the type of story I never tire of seeing, and it’s the kind of debut feature that makes me really excited for the creative careers of Peace and Zeidman. They’re both going to do more magnificent things, I just know it.