June Squibb in the beginnings of Scarlett Johansson

In its beginnings as a director Eleanor the GreatScarlett Johansson tries to shape a portrait of aging, loneliness and sorrow in America through the misadventures of its eponymous protagonist, played by the funny June Squibb (Thelma). You want Eleanor the Great To succeed because of his charming head and his convincing premise (the scenario is of Tory Kamen), but he has trouble finding his groove. The film hinders between comics and more dramatic rhythms, and although Johansson turns out to be a competent Helmer, it is not enough to overcome certain dizzying tone imbalances. However, at the very least, Eleanor the Great Offers a break -oriented break on the superabundance of the suites, prequal and other studios who come out of the existing IP.

The film, which was presented in the prestigious UN sidebar, seems to me a particular choice for Cannes. A place more appropriate for this well-being film could have been Sundance or Tiff; Its forces recall the low -budget comedies of the 90s – charismatic lead, relatively strong support actors and a comforting history in its predictability and its compulsory suspension of disbelief.

The film follows Eleanor Morgenstein (Squibb), a 94 -year -old woman forced to return to New York and move with her daughter Lisa (Jessica Hecht) after her best friend Bessie (Rita Zohar) dies unexpectedly. The transition is difficult when the nonagenarian realizes that no one has time for her. In order to find a community, Eleanor is looking for activities in his local Jewish community center, where her daughter has enrolled her in singing lessons. A clumsy misunderstanding won her in a group for the Holocaust survivors, and instead of correcting the error, Eleanor adopts the stories of the Holocaust of the best dead friend as hers. This leads Eleanor to befriend Nina (Erin Kellyman), a 19 -year -old journalism student who wants to write about Eleanor’s experiences.

It is a daring premise that could have worked better. Eleanor the Great Assigns the questionable actions of the holder character for sorrow and isolation. But this framing is not asserted early or forcefully to be convincing, so what could have been a fascinating and dark study of an elderly woman seeking to connect after the death of her nearest friend becomes an unequal chronicle and sometimes tried with a fairly strange pattern. Strongers stronger and more significant in the film imply that Eleanor suffered a second maturity entry by preparing for the Bat Mitzvah that she never had like a child and shouting a friendship with Nina.

Eleanor the Great Opens with a large sequence that establishes the life of Eleanor and Bessie together. The two women have been friends for decades and have decided to share a small house in Florida after the death of their respective husbands. Their routines include discussions early in the morning around coffee, weekly grocery shopping and looking at their favorite anchor Roger (Chiwetel Ejiofor) in evening news.

Johansson’s management is ensured here, establishing intimacy between these two older women with the kind of endeavor generally reserved for stories about youth. These and other subsequent moments of the film reminded me of how Sarah Friedland captured aging as her own age Familiar touch. Work with DP Hélène Louvart (Chimera), Johansson, like Friedland, represents becoming an old as an equally energizing chapter in adulthood.

When Bessie dies, Eleanor is emptied and does not feel moored. More scenes from the fight against the fight against the realities of this mourning would have strengthened the film by offering a more persuasive base for its subsequent decisions. Instead, Johansson moves quickly, and before we know, Eleanor returned to New York to live with his daughter and grandson Max (Will Price). It does not take long to realize that neither Lisa, who is in shock of a divorce, nor Max, a teenager, has much time for her.

Eleanor finds himself in the group of Holocaust survivors by a complete accident, but she does not remedy misunderstandings, because she prefers the community within this group to theater adults in the song class that Lisa signed it. In a moving decision, when she is invited to introduce herself, she adopts Bessie’s biography as hers.

Nina, a journalism student in search of her next story, is deeply moved by Eleanor’s falsified story on the exhaust of Poland and to come to the United States, although Eleanor initially rejects Nina’s calls for a profile, the persistence of Cub journalist is paying. The two embark on a sweet friendship that I want to have more time for Gestate. Nina’s mother, who was Jewish, is recently died, and her father (whom Eleanor does not know how to be anchor news, Roger) is too subsumed by his own sadness to pay him attention, so the relationship with Eleanor becomes a source of real comfort.

The comic elements of Eleanor the Great Works mainly because of the solid performance of Squibb as a sometimes acaritant and slightly authoritarian mother. At 94, her character is still relatively independent and thorny, and it’s funny to see her break against younger people who assume the opposite.

Things start to become trembling when Johansson reduces comedy to look into more serious turns. Change is bumpy partly because performance does not align with the theoretically increased new issues in history. Eleanor’s dishonesty is placed in more precarious situations, in particular to speak to journalism students of ethical narration and the interest of a local news channel to disseminate a segment about it.

The introduction of an additional thread on the relationship of Roger and Nina is soft, but does not have much time to develop, which only emphasizes how underwasted Ejiofor and Kellyman are. These new intrigues clutter Eleanor the Great where condensation could have been a better choice. More disappointing, we never really have a good sense of Eleanor’s inner life, which means that the ambitions of the film are not satisfied.