I can already see and hear it now: Julianne Moore, decked out in blue overalls with a little nametag on them, a toolbelt strapped around her waist, and belting out “The City May Have Chewed Me Up (But It Can’t Spit Me Out)” before accepting her award at the next Oscars. It’s a fictional song, created by writer/director Jesse Eisenberg for the landlord character Miss Danielle in the fictional play “Nosy Neighbors” at the heart of The Debut. Eisenberg’s surreal screwball comedy is about as different from his acclaimed dramedy, A Real Pain, as one can possibly get. While that film found humor and hope in a Holocaust tour, The Debut is deliberately farcical and so funny it will make you lose your breath. And yet it’s Moore, who never plays for laughs but gets them, anyway, delivers a performance that ranks among her best, and think of the impressive ground that covers.
In The Debut, Moore plays another invisible housewife, not unlike the role she played in Far from Heaven years ago. Her character, Mona, isn’t trapped in the 1950s, however. She’s a modern wife and mother in New Jersey, but she’s practically invisible to everyone around her. That includes her disinterested husband (Patrick Fabian), who barely acknowledges her existence, even when out with friends, and expects dinner to be ready on time. Even their kids treat her like a ghost.
All of this changes when Mona tries out for a community theatre production of Nosy Neighbors, a ridiculous apartment comedy that recently had one of its lead roles abandoned by the star actress, played by Broadway legend Bernadette Peters in a cameo that shows she hasn’t missed a beat. Mona has never done anything like this before, and it shows. Her audition, a mousy singing attempt that unmoved director Jerry (Paul Giamatti) quickly cuts short, should have been the first and last. But Mona is determined, pestering until he gives her the role…mainly because nobody else tried out for it.
What follows is a powerhouse story of a woman breaking out of her shell and her comfort zone, and finding the inner thespian that was lurking within. There’s a key moment when the Mona we knew vanishes, and the new, bolder one emerges. It occurs when Jerry has Mona re-enact a key Miss Danielle scene where she’s only meant to say “The rent is due”, but she has to do it convincingly enough for him to actually pay. Mona, distraught at not knowing what to do to give the line its proper authority, devolves into a screaming fit of expletives from which it seems she can never return. But Jerry knows how to break an actor down and bring them back up, and Mona undergoes an incredible transformation in that moment, finding her voice in a scene that will have crowds roaring with laughter and appreciation. When Moore’s name is called for her sure-fire Best Actress Oscar nomination, this is the scene they will show that demonstrates her greatness.
Eisenberg never lets The Debut linger too long at a single emotional register. The film takes a sudden turn when Mona, who mimics stage actor behavior and language to hide her ignorance, gets a big ego over her newfound confidence, driving Jerry and the production to the brink of destruction. Moore is as brilliant as ever, finding the balance between Mona’s zany stage antics, and the timid woman just trying to find where she truly belongs in the world, perhaps for the first time. It’s a highwire act that Eisenberg pulls off, although there are some scenes, especially following Mona’s ascension, that linger too long and circle the drain. It’s understandable that Eisenberg doesn’t want to cut any of it because Moore is so goddamn good that to lose any of it would be a tragedy. The same goes for Giamatti, who finds the heart within the growling Jerry, a former actor of some note who never got to see his dreams fulfilled. Along with a strong supporting cast that includes Halle Bailey and Havana Rose Liu as two of Mona’s friendliest colleagues, and others plucked from the Broadway scene, The Debut has the frantic energy of a stage production that could fly off the rails at any moment.
Nobody will be shocked to know that Moor and Giamatti are fantastic. The surprise for me is Eisenberg, although I probably shouldn’t be. Throughout his career, he’s been an actor who has shown a capacity to excel at literally every type of performance. Even as a director, his films, which include When You Finish Saving The World (his first film with Moore) and the acclaimed A Real Pain, couldn’t be more different or more challenging. The Debut shows that is not only one Hell of a songwriter (he wrote all of the Nosy Neighbors songs himself), but a director capable of delivering absurdist comedy and affecting human drama in equal measure. You could fill an entire Playbill with praise to heap on The Debut, one of the best movies of the year.
A24 will release The Debut in theaters on December 11th.
