In the fine dramedy Eleanor the Great, the 94-year old widow Eleanor (played by 94-year old June Squibb) moves to New York City, near her daughter and grandson. On her way to a class for seniors at the Jewish Community Center, she is diverted to a group of Holocaust survivors, who mistake her for one of them. She is not a Holocaust survivor, but fails to correct them, and then gets in deeper when the enthusiastic college student Nina (Erin Kellyman) chooses her as the subject for a school project.
Nina’s mother has unexpectedly died six month before, and Nina is still rocked by the loss. She needs the support of her father, the celebrity journalist Roger (Chiwetel Ejiofor), but he is too consumed by his own grief to provide it. Eleanor’s grandmotherly nurturing fills the void.
Eleanor has just lost Bessie, her best friend of 50 years; the two women had been roommates as widows for the past eleven years. Grieving the loss and being new in a strange city, Eleanor is very lonely, and she adopts Nina as her own. The two become inter-generational soulmates.
But their relationship was founded on an outrageous lie – a lie that is easy to expose. We know that it is inevitable that Eleanor will, as they say, lose control of the narrative.
This is a really good movie, and not the one I expected. It’s not a geezer comedy. And it’s Nina’s movie as much as it’s Eleanor’s. As Eleanor the Great moves from a comedy of manners into an exploration of grief, the key is found in three relationships, those of Eleanor and Bessie, Nina and her dad and Nina and Eleanor.
Of course, no one can play an old gal full of piss and vinegar better than June Squibb (Nebraska, Thelma), and she doesn’t disappoint. But the revelation here is Erin Kellyman’s remarkably convincing performance as Nina; she’s great.
Ejiofor is good as Nina’s dad, and so are Jessica Hecht as Eleanor’s sandwich generation daughter and Rita Zohar as Eleanor’s dear friend Bessie.
Eleanor the Great is the first feature for Scarlett Johannson as a director and for screenwriter Tony Kamen. Johannson directs this film very ably, with near-perfect pacing. Scarlett Johannson is also a NYC native who loves NYC, and like Woody Allen and Martin Scorsese, she gets to celebrate the city in her work.
A much deeper film than its marketing would indicate, Eleanor the Great is still an audience-pleaser.
