REVIEW: The Debut
Julianne Moore gives a stellar performance as a middle-aged woman who’s become invisible to even those closest to her, in Jesse Eisenberg’s pitch perfect comedy The Debut, premiering in competition at the San Sebastian International Film Festival (Sept 18-26). Moore’s Mona is ignored by her husband and, as he cruelly jokes at dinner with friends, serves no role now that her teenaged twins can drive. When she lands a part in a musical production at a local community theater, directed by despot Jerry (Paul Giamatti), she finds new purpose—which ultimately takes her down a dangerous path.
Eisenberg has described the film as being autobiographical, based on his experience feeling like an outcast as a kid who discovered a safe, supportive place in community theater in 1990 Central New Jersey, where the film is set. In The Debut, Jerry is initially irritated by Mona’s nervousness, so he begins working one-on-one with her to help her more fully embody her character. What he doesn’t expect is how fully Mona will replace her own personality with her character’s, trying to take on someone else’s life entirely and shed her own. It’s method acting gone too far (“There’s a method to the madness,” the movie poster quips.) And it makes for some very funny scenarios.
The creative trio of writer-director Eisenberg and co-stars Moore and Giamatti deftly handle both the comedic moments of Mona’s spiraling out—her “process”—and also the tension of not knowing whether she will ultimately sink the entire production. Giamatti’s Jerry is surprisingly tender with her at moments and infuriated at others. He pushes Mona to confront the “mask” she wears in society, leading to a breakthrough for her, as an actor and a person. She admits she lives in constant fear of saying or doing the wrong thing, getting yelled at, working to make everyone around her happy even though she is crying inside. “Sounds exhausting,” Jerry empathizes. Female viewers may relate.
In a key scene, Jerry digs into her past—she’s been overlooked her whole life, and now her kids barely notice her presence while her husband only talks to her when he runs out of toilet paper or wants dinner. When a random man cuts in front of Mona at a grocery store checkout, her invisibility is complete. Other critics have referred to her as a “repressed housewife” or a “sad suburban homemaker,” but I think they’re missing the point. Then again, listening to writer-director Eisenberg talk about Mona at a press conference in San Sebastian, I found myself wondering if Moore had infused her character with something even Eisenberg hadn’t fully or consciously intended.
Yes, he wanted to show she felt invisible, but he hinted that this was also all in her mind. He said he worked with the production designers to create Mona’s world—her cold prison-like home, the warmth of the theater community, the faux-seedy downtown—as “not necessarily reality” but rather “how she feels.” In other words, what she’s feeling might not be real. She might even be going crazy. But Moore’s performance tells us something different. Mona may have internalized her invisibility, and she may be on the verge of a nervous breakdown, but this is definitely her character’s reality. And it’s one described ad nauseam by women Mona’s age.
Jerry has a great line where he admits that everyone really just wants to be center stage. We could probably all say the same about our own lives. Mona finds a new community, new confidence, and new masks to wear, but all of this also serves to give her a new center-stage billing in her own life, invisible only if she wants to be. Eisenberg described the story as “the birth of an artist.” But he’s also made a film about the rebirth of a woman.
Review originally published by AWFJ.org
Images courtesy of A24, author
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