Bonus TIFF post: Julianne Moore is a marvel in The Debut
Jesse Eisenberg’s comedy about a mousy woman who finds her voice in a community theatre production is riotously funny
Okay. I know I wrote in my last post that I was happy not to be covering TIFF this year, but the kind folks at the TARO Group and Elevation Pictures invited me to a screening of The Debut (Rating: ✭✭✭✭). They thought that the theatre connection in the film would be up appropriate for this newsletter.
Jesse Eisenberg’s very funny follow-up to his Oscar-winning film A Real Pain is set in the seemingly low-stakes world of community theatre. Julianne Moore plays Mona Friedman, a middle-aged suburban mom whose husband (Better Call Saul’s Patrick Fabian) ignores her and whose children are old and cool enough that they don’t need her to drive them anywhere.
One day, she auditions for a local musical directed by one Jerry Blankenbeuhler (Paul Giamatti), who according to one worshipful auditioner is “the biggest name in New Jersey community theatre.”
Mona hasn’t sung in public since school choir, and her audition does not go well. But when weeks go by and the woman who was cast in the role — played by none other than Broadway legend Bernadette Peters — drops out, Jerry calls her. And that’s when her life begins to change.
At first, Mona — who’s cast as Miss Danielle, the tough superintendent of a New York apartment building in a show called Nosy Neighbours — is awkward and tentative. She stands stiffly and can barely squeak out her character’s signature phrase, “Rent’s due!”
But in a remarkable scene, Jerry gets her to imagine what would happen if Miss Danielle failed to collect the rent — in other words, to take the role dead seriously — and Mona invests the scenario with urgency and realism. The proper, buttoned-down housewife erupts in an f-bomb filled rant, and at my screening the audience burst into applause.
After this breakthrough, she begins taking matters a little too seriously. Among other things, she moves out of her spacious home, checks into a seedy hotel, breaks into the super’s storage closet and begins fixing the odd plumbing leak.
During rehearsals, she questions Miss Danielle’s actions and the internal logic of the script. In other words, she becomes a method acting nightmare.
Like Christopher Guest’s Waiting For Guffman, the obvious comparison, The Debut has a real affection for the people in this unique world, with their odd rituals and customs. It helps that the Nosy Neighbors cast is filled with some legitimate theatre actors, like Tony Award-winner Bonnie Milligan (Kimberly Akimbo), Colton Ryan (New York, New York) and Halle Bailey (The Little Mermaid onscreen).
But although the film is riotously funny, Eisenberg is after something a bit more than satire. In exploring the emotional motivations of her character, Mona begins gaining confidence and perspective about her own life. When, in rehearsal, she sings the line “I want more,” it hits home. She also finds a community of like-minded souls, albeit one whose members carry around bananas for extra potassium.
The film hits a plateau around the 2/3 mark, leaning into visual gags rather than deepening its characters, the way someone like Alexander Payne might. (Payne also would have given Giamatti’s Larry a humbling moment, like the one late in The Holdovers.) And some of the Nosy Neighbours actors could have had a bit more to do than wonder if Mona is going to ruin their opening night.
But this is clearly a star vehicle for Moore, who believably transforms from a timid homemaker into the clear-eyed, full-throated star of her own life. The role feels scaled to the planes of her porcelain profile, and no wonder: Eisenberg penned the part specifically for her. And she deserves every accolade that’s bound to come her way.
The Debut screens at the TIFF Lightbox on Thurs., Sept. 17 at 2 pm. Ticket details here. It will also get a wide release in mid-December.