Eleanor the Great

Ninety-four-year-old Eleanor loses the friend she has lived with for years in Florida and returns to New York to her daughter. At a support group she attends against the loneliness, she tells her friend's experiences as though they were her own. The lie grows and a young journalism student wants to write the story. Scarlett Johansson directed, her first film. June Squibb plays Eleanor, with Chiwetel Ejiofor and Erin Kellyman in the cast. The subject is memory and ownership: is telling someone else's pain a way of carrying it or of stealing it. The telling is plain and left to the actors; Johansson as director stays away from formal display. Squibb carries a lead role in her nineties and the whole weight of the film rests on her. It played in Un Certain Regard at Cannes in 2025. The tone moves between comedy and heavy material and the balance slips in places. Who it is for: viewers who like quiet films about age, loneliness and memory. Who it is not for: anyone wanting a sharp narrative; the film settles somewhere soft.