Jesse Eisenberg may never again direct a movie as supremely Jewish as “A Real Pain,” which earned the director a BAFTA and his co-star Kieran Culkin an Oscar and a Golden Globe, but his upcoming film, “The Debut,” looks incredibly promising.
Just like in his first film, “When You Finish Saving the World,” where Julianne Moore plays single mom Evelyn Katz, in this film, Moore also plays as a very Jewishly named, if you will, character: Mona Friedman. Though Friedman does not appear to have been raised Jewish; in the trailer, she talks about not having sung in front of anyone since singing in church choir.
Moore’s character in this new film is a stay-at-home mom, belittled and taken for granted by her husband (“the kids can drive, she doesn’t do anything anymore,” he says of his spouse), who auditions for a musical at her local New Jersey community theater.
Surprisingly, she gets the part. Mona is then forced to work under the play’s exacting director, Jerry, played by Paul Giamatti, who both seems to have extraordinary faith in the actress and a penchant for torturing her, and anyone who works under him, really.
“Jerry is going to test you and push you and drag you through the mud,” the character played by Halle Bailey, of “The Little Mermaid” fame, tells Mona in the movie’s trailer. Both Bailey and Eisenberg appear to play Mona’s co-stars in the musical Jerry is putting on, which I’m very excited to share was written and composed by Eisenberg himself! The trailer notably doesn’t feature any singing, but I truly hope that it will be a big part of a movie, because nothing sounds better to me than a Jesse Eisenberg musical (what does this say about me?!).
Composer Emile Mosseri (“Minari”), who worked with Eisenberg on his debut film, reunited with Eisenberg to work on this film’s score. Steven Gizicki of “A Complete Unknown” serves as music supervisor and Bill Sherman of “In the Heights” fame is signed on as executive music producer. “The Debut” also stars musical legend Bernadette Peters (as herself perhaps?) and Havana Rose Liu, who most recently starred in the pretty Jewish “Tuner.”
The movie marries two worlds the actor and director is intimately familiar with: the film and the theater world. Eisenberg has starred in and directed several plays, including “The Revisionist,” which, like “A Real Pain,” was also about a young man going on a trip to Poland and staying with his second cousin there. “The Revisionist” is based on the Holocaust history of Eisenberg’s real second cousin, Maria, a Holocaust survivor from Szczecin, Poland. “A Real Pain” is also inspired by Maria’s story and was filmed in her old home.
The trailer for “The Debut,” released by A24 this Tuesday, June 23, does not announce the movie’s release date, but it does say the movie is “coming soon.” Not soon enough, in my opinion!
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