On February 26, 2025, Jesse Eisenberg signed a bittersweet comedy on the quest for origins and dysfunctional family relationships.
The actor Jesse Eisenberg (The Social Network, elusive, Zombieland…) signs his second film as a director. After When you finish Saving the Worldhe continues to explore dysfunctional family ties in A Real Painin theaters on February 26, 2025. In the casting, the filmmaker himself plays one of the main characters and gives Kieran Culkin (Succession), already awarded many prizes for its performance in this feature film.
The plot follows two cousins with diametrically opposed characters, the very anxious David and the too spontaneous Benji, who find themselves for a trip to Poland following the death of their grandmother. They decide to follow the trace of this Polish immigrant to the house where she lived before leaving for the United States. But this memorial quest in the footsteps of their Judeity will exacerbate their fractures and their tensions, while allowing them to find themselves truly for the first time in many years.
This strange Buddy Movie explores the weight of historical trauma, the hierarchy of pain, the forms of expression of depression, but especially the complexity of family relationships that sail in a “I love you, but I also hate you for this that you are and what I am not “. Everything is written with great accuracy, sailing with ease between humor and pain. If the finesse in the portrait of his characters and their tensions is perfectly mastered, A Real Pain It would not work without particularly convincing interpretations either.
Jesse Eisenberg is always perfect in the role of hyper-anxious, uncomfortable in social relations, which locks himself in silence without sharing his fears and his discomfort, however visible. Kieran Culkin is great in the role of this cousin who reacts to each of his impulses, unable to be silent despite what his interlocutor or society thinks, and who charms everyone by his spontaneity while hiding a discomfort deep and unspeakable. If the second won the Golden Globe for this role and remains the favorite for the Oscar for best actor in a supporting role, it is the whole duo that plays a solid score. Jesse Eisenberg thus signs a sweet and bitter, funny and painful comedy, to be discovered in theaters.
Synopsis – Two cousins with diametrically opposed characters – David (Jesse Eisenberg) and Benji (Kieran Culkin) – who undertake a trip to Poland in order to honor the memory of their beloved grandmother. Their odyssey will take an unexpected turn when the old tensions of this improbable duo will resurface with, in the background, the history of their family …