Mothers, Monsters, And Moral Conundrums

Maja and Leah fall in love quickly after they meet, with the latter temporarily moving into the former's place. The film's opening features a few cute scenes of them together with Maja helping Leah use pop music to improve her Danish language skills — the film's Danish title "Natten har øjne" ("The Night Has Eyes") comes from the lyrics to one of these songs. These happy times together, however, are interrupted by the story's big inciting incident: After ignoring a call from her mother Chana (Sofia Gråbøl), Leah has a seizure. Needing to recover, the couple's moving plans reverse, with Leah returning home to live with her mom in the United Kingdom and Maja following along to join her.

Chana originally came from a secular Jewish background, but after marrying an Orthodox man, she took up frum observance. Her husband and Leah's father is now dead, but Chana has stayed a part of his community — and has been partaking in kabbalistic rituals for mysterious purposes. Chana will insist all her rituals are for the purposes of protection, but through her own investigations and meetings with Lev (David Dencik), a religious bookstore owner and secret magic expert who serves to educate Maja on Jewish culture, Maja grows increasingly suspicious that Chana might not have her daughter's best interests in mind.

Somewhat surprisingly, but refreshingly, the main conflict doesn't have to do with Leah and Maja's queerness. It's not something Leah and Chana talk openly about with each other, but any potential homophobia on Chana's part is merely subtextual, and pretty minor subtext compared to the broader concerns about her desire to control her daughter's life. Lev says he "could be" or maybe even "should be" bothered by Leah and Maja's relationship, but he simply isn't. "Attachment" doesn't whitewash Orthodox Jewish communities into bastions of acceptance, but it doesn't demonize the people living in these communities as purely bigoted either, creating a nuanced depiction of living within the intersectional identities of Judaism and queerness.