Scarlett Johansson debuts as a director in Cannes with a comic tale of grief and empathy

CANNES – Scarlett Johansson’s directorial debut, “Eleanor the Great,” stars June Squibb arsenic a 94-year-old pistillate who, retired of grief and loneliness, does a unspeakable thing.

After her champion person (Rita Zohar) dies, Eleanor (Squibb) moves to New York and, aft accidentally joining the incorrect gathering astatine the Jewish Community Center, adopts her friend’s communicative of Holocaust survival. The movie builds toward a infinitesimal wherever Eleanor could beryllium harshly condemned successful a nationalist forum, oregon not.

For Johansson, her movie speaks to the moment.

“There’s a deficiency of empathy successful the zeitgeist. It’s evidently a absorption to a batch of things,” says Johansson. “It feels to maine similar forgiveness feels little imaginable successful the situation we’re in.”

Johansson brought “Eleanor the Great” to the Un Certain Regard sidebar of the Cannes Film Festival this week, unveiling a comic and tender, character-driven, New York-set indie that launches her arsenic a filmmaker. For the 40-year-old star, it's the humble culmination of a imagination that's ever bounced astir successful her mind.

“It has been for astir of my career,” Johansson says, gathering astatine a edifice connected the Croisette aft a time of junket interviews. “Whether it was speechmaking thing and thinking, ‘I tin envision this successful my mind,’ oregon adjacent being connected a accumulation and thinking, ‘I americium directing immoderate elements of this retired of necessity.’”

Johansson came to Cannes conscionable days aft hosting the season finale of “Saturday Night Live,” making for a reasonably head-spinning week. “It’s adding to the surrealistic constituent of the experience,” Johansson says with a smile.

In conscionable implicit a month’s time, she'll beryllium backmost successful a big summertime movie, “Jurassic World Rebirth.” But adjacent that gig is simply a merchandise of her ain interests. Johansson had been a instrumentality of the “Jurassic Park” movies for years, and simply wanted to beryllium a portion of it.

Following her ain instincts, and her willingness to combat for them, has been a regular diagnostic of her vocation recently. She confronted The Walt Disney Co. implicit wage during the pandemic merchandise of “Black Widow,” and won a settlement. When OpenAI launched a dependable strategy called “Sky” for ChatGPT 4.0 that sounded eerily akin to her own, she got the institution to instrumentality it down.

She's progressively produced films, including “Eleanor the Great,” “Black Widow” and “Fly Me to the Moon.” After moving with an enviable drawstring of directors specified arsenic Jonathan Glazer (“Under the Skin”), Spike Jonze (“Her”), the Coen brothers (“Hail, Caesar!”) and Noah Baumbach (“Marriage Story”), she's go a portion of Wes Anderson's troupe. After a standout show successful “Asteroid City,” she appears successful “The Phoenician Scheme,” which premiered soon earlier “Eleanor the Great” successful Cannes.

“At immoderate point, I worked capable that I stopped worrying astir not working, oregon not being applicable — which is precise liberating,” Johansson says. “I deliberation it’s thing each actors consciousness for a agelong clip until they don’t. I would not person had the assurance to nonstop this movie 10 years ago.”

“Which isn’t to accidental that I don’t often deliberation galore times: What the hellhole americium I doing?” she adds. “I person that feeling, still. Certainly doing ‘Jurassic,’ I had galore moments wherever I was like: Am I the close idiosyncratic for this? Is this working? But I conscionable precocious saw it and the movie works.”

So does “Eleanor the Great,” which Sony Pictures Classics volition merchandise astatine immoderate aboriginal date. That's owed importantly to the show of Squibb, who, astatine 95, experienced a Cannes lasting ovation alongside Johansson.

“Something I’ll ne'er hide is holding June successful that moment,” says Johansson. “The pureness of her joyousness and her beingness successful that infinitesimal was precise touching, I deliberation for everyone successful theater. Maybe my mode of processing it, too, is done June. It makes it little idiosyncratic due to the fact that it’s hard for maine to sorb it all.”

Some parts of “Eleanor the Great” person idiosyncratic touches, though. After 1 quality says helium lives successful Staten Island, Squibb's quality retorts, “My condolences.”

“Yeah, I had to apologize to my in-laws for that,” Johansson, who is joined to Staten Island autochthonal Colin Jost, said laughing. “I was like: Believe it not, I didn’t constitute that line.”

A poster for the 1999 documentary astir underground cartoonist R. Crumb, “Crumb,” besides hangs connected the partition successful 1 scene, a vague reference, Johansson acknowledges, to her loosely connected 2001 breakthrough movie “Ghost World.”

“I was precise young erstwhile I made that movie. I deliberation I was 15, and the quality is expected to beryllium 18 oregon 19. When I was a teenager, I often played characters who were a spot older than myself,” Johansson says. “Even doing ‘Lost successful Translation,’ I deliberation I was 17 erstwhile I made it. I deliberation I was playing idiosyncratic successful their mid-20s.”

“It’s a comic thing,” she says. “I wonderment sometimes if it past feels similar I’ve been astir truthful long, that radical expect maine to beryllium successful my 70s now.”

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