Editor’s Observe: This evaluation was initially revealed throughout the 2025 Cannes Movie Pageant. Sony Photos Classics releases “Eleanor the Nice” in theaters on Friday, September 26.
Eleanor (June Squibb) has a finest pal. In actual fact, she’s had the identical finest pal for the previous seven a long time of her life. With each of their husbands lengthy useless and youngsters effectively out of the nest, Eleanor and Bessie’s (Rita Zohar) lives don’t simply revolve round one another, they’re woven into one another. They don’t simply share an condo in Florida, they share a bed room, with their neat twin beds laying facet by facet, full with matching headboards. They do all the things collectively, sorting payments and clipping coupons and happening walks, and at the hours of darkness of sure nights, telling one another the worst issues they will bear in mind about their lives.
Suffice it to say, this relationship has labored out. So, what occurs when the inevitable occurs? Such is the set-up of Scarlett Johansson’s characteristic directorial debut, “Eleanor the Nice,” which tenderly, if trippingly examines what occurs after we lose a very powerful individual in our lives, after which take halting steps towards discovering somebody, if not as essential, however simply as particular to assist fill the opening left behind. All of that is neatly tucked into the final (and broadly reported) plotline of the movie, which follows Eleanor as she decamps for New York Metropolis and strikes up a brand-new friendship with lovable school scholar Nina (the pleasant Erin Kellyman).
However that’s not actually what “Eleanor the Nice” is about.
Written by Tory Kamen, “Eleanor the Nice” hinges on the early appeal of its comparatively feel-good premise — inter-age friendship, what an idea! — earlier than piling on the ever-darker twists and turns. That’s to not say the movie isn’t humorous or candy, however that there’s something far more profound and uncomfortable at its coronary heart, and one which poses a tough problem for first-time filmmakers Johansson and Kamen. It doesn’t all the time land, however the makes an attempt to navigate the issues which are central to the movie are simply as compelling after they don’t work, maybe much more so.
Right here’s what brassy Eleanor discovers when she returns residence to New York Metropolis to reside along with her grownup daughter Lisa (a beautiful Jessica Hecht) and her good-natured grandson Max (Will Worth in a really underwritten function): making an attempt one thing new at any age is tough, perhaps even not possible whenever you’ve acquired a damaged coronary heart. So whereas Eleanor is prepared to humor Lisa and head to the native Jewish group heart to hitch a singing class, she’s additionally positively going to roll her eyes at it, and in all probability going to simply step proper out the door, all the higher to faux she’s above it and never, in reality, terrified to strive it.
And when one other good girl, about Eleanor’s age, makes an attempt to information her into one of many JCC rooms, Eleanor is simply curious sufficient and simply confused sufficient to go along with her. It’s not the singing class room. It’s a help group for Holocaust survivors and, as we’ve discovered early on, Eleanor is not a Holocaust survivor. However Bessie was, so when Eleanor pretends to be one, simply evenly taking up Bessie’s personal reminiscences to share with the group (Johansson forged many precise Holocaust survivors for these roles), it’s not malicious. And when shining-eyed scholar journalist Nina, who’s sitting in on the group to write down a paper about them, takes immediately to apparent star Eleanor, the lonely transplant lets herself imagine her personal tales. What might it harm? We’ll discover out, and so will Eleanor and Nina.
Initially, Eleanor’s lie is, effectively, it’s form of humorous. We are able to see, by the use of Kamen’s sharp writing, Johnasson’s sure-handed directing, and Squibb’s layered efficiency how this may occur. It’s more durable to see how she may get out of it, particularly as her bond with Nina grows. And lingering over each interplay between Eleanor and Nina? A two-pronged beast: the risk that Eleanor’s deception might be revealed, and the information that these two would have been in a position to bond even with out Eleanor’s lie.
Each Eleanor and Nina are outlined (and confined) by the worst factor that’s ever occurred to them: effectively, Nina by the worst factor that’s ever occurred to her (the still-fresh demise of her mom), and Eleanor by the worst factor that’s ever occurred to the individual she loves most on the planet (and, arguably, to the whole world itself). If you happen to’re in a position to see how alike these two positions are, you’re more likely to benefit from the thornier facets of “Eleanor the Nice” and the larger questions that Johansson and Kamen pose in a seemingly amiable outing.
As Eleanor and Nina journey across the metropolis (Hélène Louvart’s heat, lived-in cinematography offers the whole movie a comfy glow, like a shiny mid-budget studio characteristic of yore), Eleanor’s lies develop, and shortly they contain nonetheless extra folks, like Nina’s father Roger (Chiwetel Ejiofor), an area information anchor who Eleanor has lengthy crushed on. It’s a bizarre, pointless little bit of serendipity, although the inclusion of Roger as a personality is a great one, permitting Kamen’s script to discover different sides of grief.
Eleanor, in fact, is aware of that is all unsuitable. She goes to nice pains to cover her lies and Nina from her precise household, and when her rabbi considerably unintentionally means that some lies are too essential to fret in regards to the query of deception (by the use of a dialogue of the story of Jacob and Esau that’s in some way each too pat and completely positioned throughout the movie), she visibly brightens. Maybe she by no means wants to return clear! Maybe what has come from her lie is extra essential than the lie itself!
However Eleanor has backed herself into an terrible nook, and in some methods, so too has Johansson’s movie, which is caught making an attempt to impart sage knowledge by means of the lens of a really hideous (if well-meaning) lie. As such, the movie’s tone tends to vacillate wildly, significantly in its closing act, as we construct to what we all know should be coming and the hope it’d lead all of us someplace higher. That Kamen’s script would try and marry these ideas with some grand-gesture stuff, actual tear-jerking selections that additionally are likely to learn as fairly tacky, doesn’t shock — in spite of everything, what’s extra melodramatic than life itself?
It provides as much as a captivating, if typically baffling first effort from Johannson and Kamen, one not afraid of huge emotional wallops, however not all the time in a position to carry them into actually revelatory areas. It’s a little bit predictable, a little bit weird, a little bit humorous, and really unhappy, however it’s additionally an bold swing at what films can nonetheless be (and what kind of stars can populate them), a message and an concept that we anticipate will lead each the director and author into fairly fruitful new chapters. It’s by no means too late to strive one thing new, Eleanor and Nina appear to wish to inform us, and even imperfect makes an attempt have actual worth.
Grade: B-
“Eleanor the Nice” premiered on the 2025 Cannes Movie Pageant. Sony Photos Classics releases it on Friday, September 26.
Need to keep updated on IndieWire’s movie opinions and demanding ideas? Subscribe right here to our newly launched e-newsletter, In Evaluation by David Ehrlich, wherein our Chief Movie Critic and Head Evaluations Editor rounds up the very best new opinions and streaming picks together with some unique musings — all solely out there to subscribers.
