'The Debut' TIFF review: Julianne Moore takes center stage in Jesse Eisenberg's community theater-based comedy
Courtesy of A24/TIFF
More movies should allow Paul Giamatti and Julianne Moore to stand on a stage and scream at each other. Their explosive confrontation in “The Debut” earned a rapturous response at the Toronto International Film Festival, and understandably so. Written and directed by Jesse Eisenberg, the film exists in a heightened comic world that does not always align with the emotional journey of its central character. Still, its characters possess an incendiary wit and confidence that could only come from a filmmaker who continues to thrive in the unconventional.
“The Debut” does not always hit the high notes it is reaching for, but it gives Moore another wonderfully eccentric role as Mona, a lonely and repressed New Jersey mother who decides to spend her free time performing in a community theater production of the original musical “Nosy Neighbors.”
Part “Avenue Q,” minus the puppet sex, “Nosy Neighbors” follows a ragtag collection of tenants living in an apartment complex. Mona auditions for the small but memorable role of Miss Dina, the building’s superintendent. She initially loses the part to Serena Cherry, played by Bernadette Peters, but Serena decides the role is beneath her and leaves to join a regional production of “Annie Get Your Gun.” That forces the theater’s artistic director, Jerry, played by Giamatti, to give Mona the part.
For Mona, this may be the most exciting thing that has ever happened to her. Her children barely acknowledge her, while her withdrawn husband, played with quiet resignation by Patrick Fabian, appears content to let her disappear into the background of their shared life. The theater therefore offers Mona more than a creative outlet. It gives her a community in which she can finally feel useful, visible and wanted.
She quickly becomes immersed in an ensemble that includes Halle Bailey as leading lady Stef and Colton Ryan as leading man Zachary, alongside an assortment of performers and assistants played by Eisenberg, Elder Isgandarov, Havana Rose Liu and Bonnie Milligan. Yet the person Mona must truly win over is Jerry, whose increasingly strained relationship with his newest cast member becomes the foundation of the film.
Jerry wants to push Mona beyond her inhibitions and help her understand the character, but Mona absorbs his direction with an intensity that soon becomes alarming. Armed with Moore’s wide-eyed expressions and eager, almost childlike sincerity, she begins treating the role as though the entire production depends upon her commitment to realism. She rents rooms in apartment complexes to study their superintendents, questions every narrative decision in the script and repeatedly challenges Jerry over details that no one else would think to dispute. She cannot understand why Miss Dina would simply declare that the rent is due rather than send formal invoices, nor can she accept that the character would allow two tenants to move in together without the proper documentation.
There is comic potential in Mona’s inability to separate theatrical logic from reality, particularly as Jerry watches the monster he helped create begin to push him toward his breaking point. The problem is that Eisenberg keeps escalating the joke without sufficiently grounding the world around it. It becomes difficult to believe that a community theater production would continue tolerating a performer who blatantly disregards the script and fights the director over every minor character choice. Because the other characters rarely respond to Mona’s behavior in a recognizable way, the film’s heightened reality begins working against the emotional sincerity Eisenberg eventually asks from us.
That disconnect becomes especially apparent during a late monologue in which Jerry reflects on the life he wishes he had lived. Giamatti delivers the speech with all the bruised vulnerability one would expect from him, but the pathos never fully lands because the film has not convincingly bridged the gap between its cartoonish comedy and its more melancholy ideas about regret, loneliness and roads not taken. The scene is moving in isolation, yet it feels imported from a more emotionally grounded version of the movie.
Moore, at least, remains completely committed to the script’s inherent absurdity. She understands that Mona is funny precisely because the character never believes she is participating in a comedy. Beneath that obliviousness, Moore also locates the ache of a woman who has spent years being overlooked and now clings desperately to the first role that makes her feel essential. Even when Mona’s behavior strains credibility, Moore keeps her from becoming a mere collection of eccentricities.
Eisenberg also brings an energetic curiosity to the production, using the film to explore the clashing personalities, petty hierarchies and intense creative convictions that define community theater. The influence of “Waiting for Guffman” is unmistakable, although “The Debut” is ultimately less interested in mocking these performers than in understanding why the stage matters so much to them. For people whose ordinary lives offer little recognition, even a supporting role in a small local production can feel transformative.
The brisk pacing keeps the film entertaining, but it also prevents Eisenberg from developing some of its most important relationships. Mona’s strained connection with her husband and children provides the reason she needs this community, yet those dynamics remain frustratingly thin. The film briefly appears to be planting the seeds of an affair or some other domestic rupture, only to abandon the possibility before it develops. As a result, Mona’s home life functions more as an explanation for her unhappiness than as a fully realized part of her story.
The original songs, written by Eisenberg for “Nosy Neighbors,” are catchy enough to become one of the film’s strongest selling points. They lend the musical-within-the-movie a surprising degree of credibility, as though “Nosy Neighbors” could actually exist in some alternate theatrical universe. Musical theater aficionados will likely eat it up, and the film may even leave audiences wondering whether Eisenberg should develop the fictional show for the stage. Moore proves more than capable of carrying the material vocally, although anyone who survived “Dear Evan Hansen” already knows she can sing.
With Moore driving the production and Giamatti serving as her increasingly exasperated counterweight, “The Debut” remains enjoyable even when its screenplay struggles to reconcile its silliness with its more sincere ambitions. I was happy to follow these characters into their strange little theatrical world, but I wanted a firmer structure and a clearer emotional progression to support the places Eisenberg eventually takes them. Watching two of our greatest living actors go to war onstage is reason enough to buy a ticket, even if “The Debut” could have sung out a little more confidently.
Grade: B
THE DEBUT played at the Toronto International Film Festival. A24 will release the film later this year.
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