#TIFF50 Review: Eleanor the Great (Gala Presentations)

By John Corrado

Scarlett Johansson’s directorial debut, Eleanor the Great, is a competent enough filmmaking start for the actress, that is held back by a questionable and awkwardly handled story. The film features a decent performance from June Squibb, with Johansson providing a much-deserved leading role for the actress in her mid-90s.

But the screenplay by Tory Kamen struggles to find the right tone for what is inherently tricky material. Squibb is Eleanor, an elderly woman who has been living in Florida with her best friend Bessie (Rita Zohar), a Holocaust survivor who fled Poland as a young adult. When Bessie passes away, Eleanor moves to Manhattan to live with her adult daughter Lisa (Jessica Hecht) and teenage grandson Max (Will Price).

While going to a choir practise at the JCC, Eleanor ends up accidentally attending a Holocaust survivor’s group, and instead of facing the embarrassment of leaving, she starts to share Bessie’s story, passing it off as her own. While Eleanor’s late husband was Jewish, and she converted to the faith, she was not in the Holocaust and this is very much not her story. But Eleanor comes to like the newfound attention, especially from Nina (Erin Kellyman), a journalism student who wants to do a piece on her.

And herein lies the problem with Eleanor the Great. It’s a film about a woman gaining clout by pretending to be a Holocaust survivor, that also wants to be a likeable crowdpleaser. As such, it’s a film that feels constantly at war with itself. The laughs feel out of place, with the film not fully committing to the darkness of its premise, and instead still trying to deliver feel-good resolutions. The film’s intentions might be too pure for it to be called exploitative, but the saccharine nature of it doesn’t mesh with the material.

There might conceivably be a way to make this story work, but it’s highly questionable if feel-good dramedy was the right approach. We are interested enough to keep watching, but can’t shake the feeling that it doesn’t really work. Maybe you just can’t spin a lighthearted tale out of someone pretending to be a Holocaust survivor.