Dir/Wri: Scarlett Johansson | US Drama 2025
Actor Scarlett Johansson makes her directorial debut with Eleanor the Great, an insightful and bittersweet drama that views intergenerational friendship and family conflict from the perspective of a 95 year old mother and widow.
Eleanor (June Squibb) is enjoying retirement with her close friend Bessie, a Holocaust survivor (Rita Zohar), in a shared beach home in Florida. Although Eleanor, who hails from the midwest and only converted to Judaism on marrying her late husband in 1953, she has tremendous empathy for her Jewish friend’s traumatic experience and will inadvertently make sure that when Bessie dies, as she does quite suddenly, her story will be shared in the future.
Bessie clearly sustained their beachside lifestyle so the sweet-natured and companionable Eleanor is forced to return to New York to live with her divorced daughter Lisa and grandson Max (Will Price) in a small apartment. There’s no room here for a third person – emotionally or physically – and Eleanor harbours no illusions about her daughter’s irritation with the new family set-up, the two pushing each other’s buttons gleefully (on Eleanor’s part) at every opportunity in an amusing way that we can all relate to, Lisa constantly selling the benefits (for her) in Eleanor moving out and into a dreaded care home.
A chance meeting leads Eleanor into a Holocaust survivors’ group. Asked to share her story, she begins to talk and her story fascinates Nina (Erin Kellyman) a young Jewish journalism student who has just lost her mother and is preparing a thesis on the subject of the Holocaust. The two bond over their shared grief and loneliness and before long Eleanor is taking Nina to synagogue and accompanying her to bat mitzvahs, Eleanor fully aware of her deception but not able to admit to it until her Lisa spills the beans in a selfish and hurtful outburst in a synagogue.
With a twinkle in her eye veteran star June Squibb is really delightful as the kind and sparky Eleanor. “Although I’m 95, I’m still 16 in my heart” is a revealing admission that may shock the young in discovering that our needs and desires don’t change much as we grow older people just get wiser and more mellow according in this charming little crowd-pleaser. @MeredithTaylor
CANNES FILM FESTIVAL 2025