The Debut

Actor, playwright, screenwriter and director Jesse Eisenberg has long nurtured ambitions to make an all-singing, all-dancing musical. Who knew? In this third feature, The Debut, the cerebral indie-movie all-rounder has finally made that dream come true with a smart, witty, occasionally strained but generally compelling comedy drama set in the niche showbusiness milieu of suburban musical theatre.

A typically magnetic Julianne Moore stars as a repressed New Jersey housewife who dreams of escaping her drab, loveless life. She is matched in screen presence by Paul Giamatti as the hot-headed director aiming to transform Moore’s shy wallflower into a confident diva. Eisenberg has some personal points to make here about the liberating power of art, and the steep emotional cost that can entail. But mostly he just wants to keep us entertained, aided by world-class lead performers and some very funny lines. Launched in Telluride and Toronto, The Debut has just had its European premiere in competition in San Sebastián, with more festival slots lined up ahead of theatrical release in December and January.

Eisenberg’s previous feature, A Real Pain (2024), earned healthy profits, rapturous reviews and multiple prizes, including an Oscar for co-star Kieran Culkin. Backed by the same key production companies, including Emma Stone’s Fruit Tree, The Debut is less of a heart-tugging, cry-laughing, all-round knockout than that film. But it is also more ambitious in terms of tone and mood, with a lightly stylised, gently retro, pre-cellphone setting which Eisenberg has pinned at around 1990. He has also described the film as disguised autobiography, using Moore’s character to channel his own childhood terror of performing on stage.

Moore plays Mona, a timid wife and mother trapped in a stale suburban marriage. After years of becoming increasingly invisible to her indifferent husband Howard (Patrick Fabian) and grown-up children, she is driven by quiet desperation to try out for a role in her local community theatre production of Nosy Neighbors, a creaky vintage Broadway musical. Brittle and nervous, Mona fails the audition, but eventually secures the part anyway following a fateful last-minute drop-out. Surrounded by new theatrical friends and cheerleading fellow cast members, she begins to enjoy the positive validation long denied to her at home.

When Mona struggles with her small but crucial role as a New York apartment building supervisor, director Jerry (Giamatti) has no choice but to apply his time-tested psychological techniques, breaking her down so he can “put Humpty Dumpty together again.” Eisenberg’s insider satire on acting-world pretensions is pretty broad here, but it leads to some of the film’s strongest comic highlights, most notably an explosive shouting match between Jerry and Mona. Later, as Mona fully embraces Method-style immersion in her character, this self-mocking absurdism is pushed to implausible but sporadically hilarious extremes, almost destroying the musical in the process.

The Debut is rooted in the kind of whimsical, extended, steadily more absurd conceit that Woody Allen might have built one of his charming mid-career comic trifles around – indeed, Eisenberg has worked with Allen and cited him in promotional interviews for this film. Moore and Giamatti are reliably great, though both have played variations on these character types before. Especially Giamatti, who specialises in pompous, tetchy, but ultimately sympathetic, self-loathing thwarted-artist figures. Moore’s Mona travels a wider psychological distance, starting out like Nora in Ibsen’s The Doll’s House before veering closer to some deranged diva from a John Waters movie. In a good way.

Eisenberg paints an agreeably busy canvas here, but leaves a few corners blank. Mona’s unsympathetic husband and their shallow chorus of dinner-party friends are one-dimensional sitcom villains at best. Similarly, even Mona’s supportive fellow players in the musical, notably young leads Stef and Zachary (real-life Broadway veterans Halle Bailey and Colton Ryan), are very thinly sketched. A little more emotional hinterland could have given more bite to the film’s core message about emancipation through artistic self-expression.

Even so, The Debut delivers enough warm-hearted humour, heavyweight star power and sharp one-liners overall to excuse a few blind spots. Having co-starred in both his previous features, Eisenberg mostly stays behind the camera this time but his song-and-dance cameo role is an enjoyably goofy, ego-free flourish. His self-composed songs for the fictional stage musical are fun too, plausibly peppered with sub-Sondheim wordplay, falling just the right side of affectionate parody.

Director, screenwriter: Jesse Eisenberg
Cast: Julianne Moore, Paul Giamatti, Halle Bailey, Colton Ryan, Cara Buono, Craig Bierko, Eldar Isgandarov, Jesse Eisenberg, Patrick Fabian, Bernadette Peters
Cinematography: Drew Daniels
Editor: Robert Nassau
Music: Emile Mosseri, Jesse Eisenberg
Production designer: Anne Ross
Producers: Emma Stone, Dave McCary, Ali Herting, Jesse Eisenberg
Production companies: Fruit Tree (US), Topic Studios (US)
World sales: A24
Venue: San Sebastián International Film Festival (Official Selection)
In English
105 minutes