A Frontmezzjunkies TIFF film review: Jesse Eisenberg finds dark comedy and unexpected tenderness in one woman’s all-consuming pursuit of the spotlight.
By Ross
With “a five, six, seven, eight…” the music begins, and suddenly a song is stuck in my head, one so delicious that I suspect it will be keeping me company for quite some time. It is Bernadette Peters who ushers us into Jesse Eisenberg’s “The Debut” with a number about the bruising realities of a life in theatre, declaring that “the city may have chewed me out, but it hasn’t spit me out.” The song belongs to Nosy Neighbors, a community theatre musical about life in a shabby New York apartment building, and it becomes an unlikely anthem for Mona Friedman, played to fierce, funny, deeply affecting perfection by Julianne Moore (Pedro Almodóvar’s The Room Next Door). Peters plays Serena Cherry, the established performer who abandons the production because the role is just too small for someone of her stature, leaving Mona to step into the part. Mona is a timid suburban housewife and mother who has spent so much of her life attending to everyone else’s needs that the prospect of occupying even a small patch of the spotlight feels almost unimaginable. Yet that song asks Mona to find the heart of a woman who knows how to stand up for herself when she has spent years standing at the counter making pancakes for a family that barely notices her beyond what she puts on the table.
Mona lives her quiet life in suburban New Jersey with her husband, Howard, played solidly by Patrick Fabian, and their two college-aged children, whose attention seems largely reserved for whatever she can do for them. Howard’s treatment of his wife is particularly dismissive. He treats her as a bore and a nuisance, yet expects her to be available when he runs out of toilet paper while sitting on the john. There is a painful familiarity to Mona’s predicament, the way a person can become so essential to the daily functioning of a household that the people living in it barely seem to notice her. Her decision to audition for the community theatre production opens a door into a life that somehow surprisingly belongs to her, even if she has no idea what to do once she walks through it. The theatre’s director, Jerry, played magnificently by Paul Giamatti (“Sideways“), spots something like a spark in Mona and, with opening night approaching and Serena gone, decides, against his better judgment, to see whether he can bring it to the surface. He is a demanding, hard-headed taskmaster whose rehearsals are an ordeal even for experienced performers. The sweet and seasoned leading lady Stef, played by Halle Bailey (“The Little Mermaid“), warns Mona, “you’ll need a banana, cause Jerry pushes so hard” during rehearsals. It’s a wonderfully absurd warning, but it also signals the intensity of the process Mona is about to enter.
Director Eisenberg (“A Real Pain“), who also wrote the screenplay, mines the peculiar seriousness of community theatre for a rich vein of dark comedy. Every line reading, pause, and adjustment becomes a matter of enormous consequence, even when the production itself is a modest little community-theatre musical. Jerry is determined to get Mona to uncover the truth of her character. He is determined to drag her through “the shit and mud” until she finds something authentic beneath her timid delivery. Even music director Marty (K. Todd Freeman) pauses in panic when Mona’s first attempt falls so flat. When Mona finally speaks her first line in her first rehearsal after a large opening number, Jerry’s response is to halt everything, and “wait for the belt” to see what happens. The meekness of her performance is precisely what he wants to challenge, and he’s hoping her character’s prop will bring something out in her. Mona has spent years living without the kind of confidence this part needs, and the rehearsal room becomes a place where she must confront the habits that have kept her small. Paul Giamatti gives Jerry an absorbing and compelling mix of forcefulness and tenderness, making the director’s insistence on authenticity both exhilarating and troubling. He sees a possibility in Mona that she has barely allowed herself to imagine, even as his methods threaten to take her somewhere she may not know how to return from.
Moore is extraordinary as Mona, tracing the transformation of a woman who has been pushed aside by those closest to her and suddenly discovers the intoxicating possibility of being seen. She brings physical comedy, awkwardness, determination, and a startling desperation to the role, allowing Mona’s growing obsession to be hilarious while keeping the hurt beneath it firmly in view. The car ride with Giamatti’s Jerry is one of the most honest and devastating scenes I’ve seen in a movie in a long time. As Mona opens up about her life, we watch her reach Jerry in a way that feels pure and unapologetic. As she works to understand her character, she begins to absorb the musical’s world into her own, wondering whether every gesture and decision in her life should follow the logic of the part she is playing. Eisenberg wisely allows the comedy to grow increasingly strange and visually surreal, thanks to cinematographer Drew Daniels and production designer Anne Ross. Watching Mona embrace her emerging self with almost alarming enthusiasm is a spectacular experience, because the pleasure of seeing her finally claim some space comes with the uneasy awareness of how far she is willing to go to keep it.
The Nosy Neighbor‘s music gives that journey its own infectious pulse. The opening number stays with me because its declaration of survival speaks directly to Mona’s struggle to claim a place for herself. It’s a very different experience watching and listening to Mona’s version after first hearing Peters sing it with such power and confidence, and the seven original songs written by Eisenberg give the community theatre production a musical life that is integral to the story. Moore and Peters make a terrific pairing in the number, with Peters bringing the confidence of a performer who knows exactly how to command a room and Moore finding her own way into the song’s bruised determination. The supporting cast adds plenty of musical pleasure and connection in the rehearsal room, with Colton Ryan as leading man Zachary, Bonnie Milligan as Trish, Lilli Cooper as Shauna, Maulik Pancholy as Eli, and Eisenberg himself as Todd, who see her long before she sees herself. Eldar Isgandarov (“Club Kid“) is especially engaging as Piotr, Jerry’s assistant, adding a welcome comic sweetness to the rehearsal-room ensemble while balancing the nervous energy of the always-available assistant. Eisenberg gets the comedy of a community theatre company treating every tiny detail as a matter of artistic survival, while taking seriously the people who have gathered to make the show. Halle Bailey gives Stef a lovely tenderness, offering Mona hugs and words of encouragement as she finds her footing, but there is something especially moving about her support on opening night. Stef wants the show to reach its silly, joyful ending, yet she also wants Mona to hold onto the person she has discovered herself to be, and Bailey lets both desires sit beautifully in that final moment. “It’s all in your hands“, Mona, the two musical leads say to her in the finale of the musical. And we see the truth of those words in their eyes.
“The Debut,” the A24-produced musical comedy, is about the unexpected places where a person might discover the courage to take up space, and about the complications that follow when the discovery arrives after years of being overlooked. Eisenberg finds tremendous comic possibility in Mona’s confusion, while Moore gives her a fierce and moving humanity that keeps us invested even when her devotion to the part becomes alarmingly zealous. The most touching thing about this film is its willingness to let the laughter catch in our throats, recognising the hurt that can sit beneath the mask of politeness, and the longing that can make a seemingly insignificant role feel essential. That opening song, though, is what stays with me. It is now sung with such spirit by a woman who once struggled to find her voice and has stepped forward into the spotlight. The words that first belonged to a character in a community-theatre musical have become unmistakably her own.
