Cannes, France (AP) – Scarlett Johansson's directorial debut, “Eleanor the Great,” stars June Squibb as a 94-year-old woman who does terrible things from grief and loneliness.
After her best friend (Rita Zohar) dies, Eleanor (Squibb) moves to New York and adopts the story of her friend's Holocaust survival after accidentally participating in a wrong meeting at the Jewish Community Center. The film is built towards the moment when Eleanor is stricken in a public forum.
For Johansson, her film speaks to that moment.
“There's a lack of empathy in the times. That's clearly a response to a lot,” Johansson says. “In our environment, it feels like forgiveness is not possible.”
This week, Johansson unveiled an interesting, soft, character-driven New York set indie that brings “Eleanor the Great” to the UN at the Cannes Film Festival and launches her as a filmmaker. For the 40-year-old star, it is the humble pinnacle of a dream that is always bouncing in her mind.
“It was for most of my career,” Johansson says he will meet at a hotel in Croisette a day after an interview with Janquet. “I'm reading and thinking about something and thinking, 'I can imagine this in my mind', or even making it,' and I think, 'I'm inevitably dictating this element.' ”
Johansson came to Cannes a few days after holding the season finale of Saturday Night Live, and it was a week of quite a head spin. “It adds to the surrealistic element of experience,” says Johansson with a smile.
In just over a month, she returns to the big summer film “Jurassic World Rebirth.” But even that gig is a product of her own interest. Johansson has been a longtime fan of the “Jurassic Park” movies and simply wanted to be a part of it.
Following her own instincts and willingness to fight for them, it was a regular feature of her recent career. She won a settlement by paying Walt Disney Co. during the “Black Widow” pandemic release. When Openai launched a voice system called “Sky” in ChatGpt 4.0, she sounded creepy and similar to hers, so she made it to take down.
She is increasingly being produced, including “Eleanor Great”, “Black Widow”, and “Fly Me Me the Moon”. After working with a series of enviable directors such as Jonathan Glazer (“Under the Skin”), Spike Johnze (“She”), Cohen Brothers (“Hail, caesar!”), and Noah Bambach (“Marriage Story”), she became part of Wes Anderson's generation. After her outstanding performance in “The Asteroid City,” she appears in “The Phoenician Scheme,” which premiered just before Cannes' “The Great Eleanor.”
“At one point, I was working well enough so I stopped worrying about not working or being related. This is very liberating,” says Johansson. “I think that's something that all the actors have felt for a long time before they don't. I wouldn't have been confident in directing this film 10 years ago.”
“I'm not saying I don't think too much about it over and over. What the heck am I doing?” she adds. “I still have that feeling. I'm certainly doing 'Jurassic'.
So is Eleanor the Great, which Sony Pictures Classics will release in a future day. That puts a considerable strain on Squib's performance, who experienced a Cannes standing ovation alongside Johansson at the age of 95.
“What I will never forget is to embrace June at that moment,” Johansson says. “The purity of her joy and her presence in that moment was very moving. I think so for everyone in the theater, and maybe the way I handle it is until June. That's not too personal because it's hard for me to absorb it all.”
However, some of “Eleanor the Great” has a personal touch. After one character says he lives on Staten Island, Squibb's character retorts, “I mean my pathetic dol.”
“Yeah, I had to apologize in-law for that,” said Johansson, who is married to Colin Jost from Staten Island. “I was: It's not, I didn't write that line.”
A poster for a 1999 documentary about underground cartoonist R. Clam 'Clam' also hangs from the wall in one scene.
“When I made that film, I was very young. I think I was 15, and the characters were 18 or 19. When I was a teenager, I often played characters older than me,” Johansson says. “Even what was 'lost in translation', I think I was 17 when I made it. I think I played someone in my mid-20s. ”
“That's funny,” she says. “Is that what I feel like so long, is it people expect me to be in the 70s now?”
