There’s one thing eternally fascinating concerning the unwinding story of a fraud. Their inevitable demise is as anxiety-inducing as it’s rewarding, to some extent. Whether or not their deception earns them neighborhood, intimate friendship or a priceless lesson, narrative fiction usually has the fraudulent character stroll away with one thing gained. Extra particularly, the support-group fraud has change into an leisure trope of kinds: Works like The Confidante, Lifeless to Me, Twinless and Struggle Membership all fall into this peculiar subgenre, and so does Tony winner Scarlett Johansson’s directorial debut, Eleanor the Nice. Suffice to say, nevertheless, characters who make the most of the vulnerability and ache of others are usually fairly nuanced, if not polarizing.
- Launch Date
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September 26, 2025
- Runtime
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98 minutes
- Writers
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Tory Kamen
- Producers
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Celine Rattray, Charlotte Dauphin, Jessamine Burgum, Jonathan Lia, Kara Durrett, Keenan Flynn, Scarlett Johansson, Trudie Styler
Eleanor the Nice follows the trials and tribulations of a snarky Iowa-born 94-year-old Jewish convert named Eleanor Morgenstein, performed by the incomparable Oscar nominee June Squibb. Eleanor loses part of herself when her greatest good friend and lifelong associate in crime, Bessie (Rita Zohar) — a Holocaust survivor — passes away. Pressured to maneuver from Florida to her uptight daughter Lisa’s (Jessica Hecht) Manhattan residence, Eleanor’s life is turned the wrong way up. Given her aversion to alone time, Eleanor’s daughter strongly encourages her to attend a “Broadway singing squad” on the Jewish Neighborhood Middle. She reluctantly goes, solely to seek out herself sitting on the fringe of a chair circle in a special group on the JCC: the Holocaust survivors help group. Earlier than she is aware of it, Eleanor takes possession of the late Bessie’s private trauma, telling her good friend’s unfathomable Holocaust experiences to a gaggle of survivors. Naturally, the lie spirals uncontrolled, particularly when Nina (Erin Kellyman), an NYU journalism pupil, latches onto Eleanor within the wake of her mom’s dying.
Written by Tory Kamen, Eleanor the Nice is a recent dramedy concerning the lesser-discussed signs of grief and their ensuing pitfalls, informed by a mightily New York Jewish lens. The journey to the movie’s morals and themes — together with forgiveness, acceptance, loneliness, survivor’s guilt and the braveness to be weak — is an undeniably unusual one. Some viewers might really feel uneasy laughing as Squibb sings a makeshift tune about her daughter’s humble abode not being stocked with bananas, or as she begins her grandiose lie with the assertion, “I am from Poland initially,” as a result of — let’s face it — there’s nothing humorous concerning the Holocaust. At instances, Johansson’s movie might be tonally muddled, which might both make for a pleasantly nuanced or an uncomfortable viewing expertise. Nonetheless, she finds a strategy to respect the atrocities confronted by European Jews within the Nineteen Thirties and ’40s by specializing in resilience, therapeutic and the ability of neighborhood.
Johansson is Jewish, as is Squibb, and the movie’s help group members are all performed by real-life Holocaust survivors. However authenticity and respect do not totally make up for Eleanor the Nice‘s abundance of clichés and borderline tacky moments, which cheapen a sensitive movie overflowing with expertise.
June Squibb and Rita Zohar are the Greats
Squibb and Zohar carry Eleanor the Nice, and their characters’ aged girly-pop friendship illuminates the movie’s charming opening. Calming Florida visuals set the scene: matching straw visors and white Velcro orthopedic sneakers, Eleanor’s bubblegum pink rollers and powder blue gown combo, flamingo artwork, beach-bound stretches and a stained-glass Star of David hanging in a window. This seven-decade friendship is clearly wealthy in recollections, and their bond is clear. However when the duo’s codependency is out of the blue damaged, Eleanor is compelled to hold on, shifting to Manhattan on the age of 94. However Eleanor isn’t any stranger to New York Metropolis — she lived within the Bronx together with her husband for 40 years earlier than shifting to the Sunshine State.
Upon arrival, Eleanor’s abrasiveness with Lisa, who believes her mom would thrive at an assisted residing facility, is a bit trite. Feedback about Lisa’s hair and her crass teen nickname, “the category mattress,” really feel as if they had been plucked from the overbearing-mother playbook. That is to not say Eleanor is a inventory Jewish mom character, however her shaky relationship together with her daughter and loud persona are definitely recycled persona traits. Nonetheless, these oversights do not cease Squibb from uplifting her brazen, no-filter character with a stellar efficiency that is each biting and evocative of essentially the most doleful facets of the human situation. She’s undoubtedly a comedic gem, and the beautiful finesse of her facial expressions is laudable.
Eleanor’s youthful presence is delivered to the display by her beverage selections — there’s one thing lovely about watching Squibb sip on Starbucks Frappuccinos and cartons of Tropicana orange juice — and her behavior of attending strangers’ Bat Mitzvahs. Her budding friendship with Nina can also be a nod to her childlike essence: they’re over 70 years aside in age, however their commonalities come up as Nina interviews “Holocaust survivor” Eleanor for a university project. Nina unknowingly seems to be to Eleanor to fill the maternal gap in her coronary heart, and Eleanor unknowingly seems to be to Nina to fill the friendship gap in hers.
Proven primarily by way of flashbacks, Zohar’s efficiency as Bessie is heart-wrenching. The Yiddish theater veteran seemingly enters Bessie’s soul, revealing her character’s dismal private story with a piercing ache in her coronary heart. Taken in by a Christian household throughout WWII, little 9-year-old Bessie, her brother and her mom hid inside a closet till Nazis ultimately deported them to Auschwitz. All Bessie ever needed was for her brother’s existence to be identified — and though her want is fulfilled underneath controversial circumstances, in her approach Eleanor does simply that. In fact, her deceitful double life comes again to chunk her, however there’s one thing poetic about making large errors as a nonagenarian.
As an odd ode to the Torah’s story of Jacob and Esau — particularly, its depiction of deception and reality — Eleanor the Nice has the items for a shifting movie concerning the funky facets of grief. However ultimately, its central Holocaust-survivor fraud plot and clunky pull-at-your-heartstrings scenes maintain it again from, nicely, greatness. Even so, Squibb followers will discover magnificence and pleasure in Johansson’s debut characteristic.
From Sony Photos Classics, Eleanor the Nice opens in theaters on September 26, 2025.