Grief is among the most challenging of human emotions. It’s a coupling of despair at loss, the ennui of loneliness, and the fondness of memory. It is a persistence of love, but also an absence that can leave us scrambling to fill the void it has created. Eleanor the Great is a film marketed as a light-hearted dramedy about a nonagenarian forming an unlikely friendship with a twenty-something, and it is that, but it’s also a film about that void; how we approach and deal with it, and the lengths that some of us will go to fill it.
Eleanor (June Squibb) and Bessie (Rita Zohar) are best friends, having been so for decades. Now, both widowed, they’ve shared an apartment in Florida for the last eleven years and spend all their time together. Shopping, exercising, eating, they even have matching twin beds in a single bedroom. They laugh through the good times and console each other in the bad times. The rest of the time, Eleanor’s sardonic wit and penchant for telling white lies ensure they get the best deals at the local supermarket and the best treatment at the local hospital. They are, in a word, adorable, and when the inevitable happens in the first minutes of the film and Bessie passes away, Eleanor’s life is left with a gaping hole in it that she doesn’t quite know how to fill.
Relocating to New York to live with her daughter, Lisa (Jessica Hecht), and grandson Max (Will Price), she’s even more removed from her comfort zone. At Lisa’s behest, she visits a local Jewish community centre for a singing class and in her attempt to escape, she ends up in a support group for holocaust survivors. When pressed, she shares her story, which leaves the room visibly moved, but there’s one problem: it’s not her story, it’s Bessie’s.
It’s here that Eleanor meets Nina (Erin Kellyman), a young woman attending the group in order to write a paper. Having suffered a recent loss herself, she connects with Eleanor and the two become friends, but this lie lives at the heart of their connection. Much of the film is as advertised; the scenes with Squibb and Kellyman are heartfelt and at times moving. Their chemistry is genuine, and the friendship that grows between them is one that most people could relate to. They’re both reeling from loss, and they are both desperate to connect.
Nina is also a journalism student and her father, Roger (Chiwetel Ejiofor), is a locally famous news personality. As the film proceeds, the lie expands and is compounded by more lies and the more people that become involved, the more difficult it becomes to maintain. Will it all come crashing down? Of course it will, there would be no movie if it didn’t. It’s an interesting choice for a feature debut directing project from Scarlett Johansson, as the subject is sensitive to say the least, but she proves to have a steady hand here. The direction isn’t flashy, but it is measured and thoughtful, and she coaxes great performances from all her actors.
The key ingredient, though, is Squibb. She’s a living legend, and while it’s her wit that will draw you in, it’s her vulnerability that will keep you in the movie. Eleanor runs the gamut of emotions, and despite the lies she’s telling, when it all comes crashing down, it’s hard not to feel for her. She is, after all, missing a part of herself. Kellyman offers a similarly excellent performance. Nina is dealing with both the loss of her mother and the absence, despite his presence, of her father, and it’s easy to get swept up with her when she connects with Eleanor, someone who sees her in a way that no one has for the last several months.
The film hinges on these two, and on the weight of the lie that binds them together. For some, that lie may be too much, as it is both an enormous lie and deals with a very sensitive subject. For others, there’s an acceptance that when we are struggling to fill the void left by the loss of a loved one, we might do some questionable things to achieve that. In either case, the film is held together by the strength of its two lead characters and the actors who play them, who are universally excellent.
Eleanor the Great screened at both Cannes and TIFF 2025 and is in theatres now, courtesy of Mongrel Media.
