Words by JANE CROWTHER
Feisty Eleanor (June Squibb) is 94 years young and still enjoys trolling her neighbours and bossing grocery store clerks around to fetch pickles. But when her bestie Bessie (Rita Zohar) passes away, Eleanor is lost. She and Bessie, a Holocaust survivor, had lived together in Florida – sleeping in matching twin beds, bitching together over the kitchen table – and Eleanor’s daughter decides to move her Ma closer to her, in Manhattan.
Floundering in the big city, Eleanor joins a Jewish OAP group at a local community centre to make new friends, only realising once she’s part of the group that they are all Holocaust survivors who regularly share their stories. Not wishing to differentiate herself, Eleanor fibs – recounting the experience she’s heard many times from Bessie as her own. And when a young journalism student (Erin Kellyman) asks to profile her, she agrees. What harm can it do?
Of course, this is no simple white lie in a world where faux Holocaust survivors threaten the authenticity of the events of WW2 for those wishing to deny it, but this is a gentle comedy designed to make audiences like Eleanor despite her misjudgements. That’s easy to do as played by Squibb, a cute granny with a comedically sharp tongue, but the film – directed by Scarlett Johansson in her helming debut – is soft around the edges.
A tinkling piano score suggests all proceedings should be viewed as quirky cute, but the way Eleanor’s lie builds out to take in the grief of a father (Chiwetel Ejiofor) and easy forgiveness, it’s territory seen numerous times before in Lifetime movies. And tonally, it’s a hard line to walk as it wanders through generational trauma, trips to Coney Island, family farce and a crisis of faith. Johansson doesn’t always manage to overcome the disconnects.
The treat therefore, is in watching Squibb twinkle her way through various situations – compelling as a fallible older woman, even if the material doesn’t meet her in quality.
Pictures courtesy of TriStar Pictures
Eleanor the Great is in cinemas now
