Let’s just come right out (pun intended?) and say it: in Disobedience, the new film from director Sebastián Lelio that premiered here at the Toronto International Film Festival on Sunday, Rachel Weisz spits in Rachel McAdams’s mouth. I know, I know; it’s a crass way to introduce a review of this quiet, contemplative little movie, but there it is. It happens; let’s acknowledge that it does, and then move on to talk about the rest of the film.

The spitting occurs during a long love scene between Ronit (Weisz) and Esti (McAdams), two childhood friends turned one-time (well, now two-time) secret lovers who were raised in an Orthodox Jewish community in London. Ronit has returned home from her new life in New York following the death of her father, a pillar of the community, and is staying at the home of Esti, who is now married to their other childhood friend, Dovid (Alessandro Nivola), a rabbi who is the heir apparent to Ronit’s late father. Partly a story of unspoken longing finally being spoken aloud, Disobedience seems inexorably headed toward this centerpiece scene. And it’s handled carefully, with a hunger that it isn’t leering. It’s volatile and delicate, saliva and all.

If only the rest of the movie could match this heat and intensity. Though finely acted by all three leads (McAdam’s British accent isn’t perfect, but she’s still plenty effective), Disobedience is, in defiance of its title, too staid and measured to deliver the intended emotional wallop. Perhaps that’s owed to the repressed, ordered society being depicted here, but I think it’s more an issue of Lelio’s approach, his somber color palette (Danny Cohen did the chilly cinematography) and slow pacing. The film goes past solemn and respectful and enters a realm of almost non-feeling, of remove.

I’ve not read Naomi Alderman’s hit book on which the film is based, so perhaps that emotional remove is a feature of the novel as well. But it’s hard to really access much in the film, to feel anything more than a faraway appreciation of the struggles faced by Ronit and Esti (and Dovid, sure). Compared to something like A Fantastic Woman, Lelio’s intimate, wrenching drama about a trans woman in Chile that is also screening at this festival, Disobedience is a distant chamber piece, a story about hidden passions without much of its own.

Again, though, Weisz and McAdams have their moments of electricity. The quickness with which they fall back into each other speaks a lot about their potent connection. When one imagines months and years of dutiful, pious Esti waiting for Ronit to return—probably assuming she won’t, feeling that her one chance at fulfillment is past and gone—Disobedience takes on a resonant sadness. But we don’t get enough of that significance, of Carol’s volcanic release, or Blue Is the Warmest Color’s mutual, consuming abandon. (Not that Disobedience necessarily has to be compared to other films about lesbian romance, but the similarities are there—or, in this case, aren’t.) I wish Weisz and McAdams had just a little more to play, that their dynamic was given some extra detail and texture and time.