By Jason Osiason

The Debut

The Debut doesn’t care about its plot and that is the best thing about it. Jesse Eisenberg sets up a story about a housewife who gets a bit part in a community theater musical, picks a fight with the director, and then essentially abandons the conventional narrative to spend the rest of the movie inside the increasingly unhinged head of a method actor. All of it through the perspective of a woman who has never been fulfilled by anything in her life until now. I love that Eisenberg is willing to follow her that far, because most comedies would have eventually returned to the husband, the kids, the obligatory domestic subplot, whereas this one keeps digging further into her obsession until there’s practically nothing else left.

Mona Friedman, played by Julianne Moore, has spent decades blending into the background of her own house, the kind of woman nobody particularly notices until they need something from her. She auditions for a musical on a whim, gets four lines, and takes them so seriously that her obsession eventually swallows the entire movie. Moore is extraordinary here, finding something almost frightening in a woman who’s spent her entire life waiting for somebody to notice her, and the transformation is hilarious precisely because Mona doesn’t see anything ridiculous about it. What begins as a joke about a housewife discovering the Method gradually turns into something resembling a possession, and you stop watching a woman rehearse and start watching a woman come apart and like it. It’s easily the furthest Eisenberg has pushed his particular brand of anxiety comedy, and I don’t think it’s a coincidence that he’s finally handed the whole thing over to someone like Moore.

And God, it’s so much fun. I should probably emphasize that because the premise makes it sound considerably heavier than it actually is, when in reality I spent most of the movie laughing my ass off. Eisenberg even wrote the songs for the fictional musical himself, and they’re wonderful in that very specific community theater way where the ambition is completely disproportionate to the available talent. The production is earnest, overreaching and frequently terrible, but everybody involved believes they’re putting on something extraordinary, and Eisenberg never makes the mistake of treating their enthusiasm as the punchline. The songs are catchy enough that I actually wanted to hear some of them again, which is an achievement considering how intentionally ridiculous the whole production is.

There’s a scene between Mona and Jerry, the director played by Paul Giamatti, that I have to be careful discussing because I’d hate to spoil where it goes. What starts as a rehearsal gradually becomes something else entirely, and I genuinely think it’s the demented comedy equivalent of the processing scene in The Master, with one person pushing and prodding until the other starts revealing things neither of them expected. It’s an astonishing sequence, simultaneously hilarious and a little terrifying, and I couldn’t figure out which of them was actually in control. Moore is getting most of the attention for this movie and deservedly so, but Giamatti is every bit her equal, giving one of his best performances as a man who’s apparently lost every meaningful battle in his life and decided this ridiculous little musical is where he’s finally going to win something. There’s such a pathetic desperation underneath his authority that even his funniest moments carry a little sadness, and watching these two feed off each other’s neuroses is an absolute pleasure.

What surprised me most, though, was how much affection Eisenberg has for the world he’s making fun of. Underneath all the spiraling anxiety and increasingly absurd behavior, The Debut is a genuinely lovely tribute to live theater and the people who devote themselves to it, particularly the ones who will never make any money or receive much recognition for their efforts. There’s something wonderful about watching a group of people treat a tiny community production like the most important artistic event of their lives, and even when Eisenberg is mercilessly exposing their pretensions, you can feel how much he loves them. By the time the show finally goes up, I found myself rooting for these ridiculous people with an enthusiasm I hadn’t expected, wanting their little musical to succeed almost as badly as they did. It’s a beautifully demented comedy about what happens when somebody finally discovers something worth being consumed by, and Moore and Giamatti are so good together that I would’ve happily watched another hour of them driving each other insane. [A-]