TIFF 50 Review – Eleanor the Great (2025)

TIFF 50 Review – Eleanor the Great (2025) – “Scarlett Johansson delivers a
debut that whispers, but hits straight in the heart.”

Directed by Scarlett Johansson
Cast: June Squibb, Erin Kellyman, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Jessica Hecht, Rita Zohar,
Will Prince
Scarlett Johansson’s directing debut is quietly confident, emotionally mature, and
deeply human. Eleanor the Great isn’t a loud movie. It isn’t trying to impress you with
clever editing or swelling strings. It chooses instead to sit in the small, fragile spaces of
grief and trust that you’ll sit with it. The film follows 94-year-old Eleanor Morgenstein
(June Squibb, delivering one of the best performances of her career) after the death of
her lifelong friend. Grief knocks her off balance, sending her from Florida back to New
York City, hoping that returning “home” might steady her. It doesn’t. If anything, she
drifts even further, pulled between memory and the unfamiliar present.

Johansson builds the film on restraint; her camera lingers, listens, and rarely forces
emotion. It’s the kind of filmmaking that asks you to lean in rather than sit back. And
Squibb rewards that trust completely. Eleanor is not a sentimental character; she is
prickly, hilarious in her dryness, stubborn, scared, and aching with loneliness. Squibb
communicates decades of friendship lost in the way she folds a sweater, or how long
she lets her fork rest on a breakfast plate before lifting it. Johansson gives her the
space to be fully alive, even when she feels half-gone.

But one of the film’s strongest elements, something that truly gives Eleanor the Great
its depth and emotional resonance, is that Eleanor is not the only one grieving. She isn’t
alone in the experience of loss, even though she feels she is. The film quietly threads in
two more stories of grief: Nina (Erin Kellyman), whose mother is dying, and Nina’s
father, David (Chiwetel Ejiofor), who refuses to acknowledge that loss is coming at all.

Johansson gives us three people, three losses, three different responses:
 Eleanor, who runs from grief by reinventing herself.
 Nina, who stares her grief in the face because she has no choice.
 David, who protects himself by denying the inevitable.

Together, their stories create a tapestry of the different shapes grief can take. Eleanor’s
lie, stepping into a Holocaust survivors’ support group and sharing a story that isn’t
hers, makes emotional sense when placed beside Nina’s honesty and David’s avoidance.
It becomes clear that Eleanor isn’t manipulating for attention; she’s drowning. She’s
reaching for connection in the only way she feels she can, and it’s wrong, but
devastatingly relatable. Nina, meanwhile, is walking through grief with startling clarity
for someone so young. She sees what Eleanor is trying to do because she understandswhat drowning looks like. And David’s denial is its own brutality. Johansson treats him
gently, but she never lets him off the hook.

This trio grounds the film. Their scenes together, awkward, tense, compassionate,
expose the truth the movie keeps circling back to: grief is universal, but the way we
carry it is fiercely individual.

When Eleanor’s story begins to spiral, the consequences land harder because we
understand she isn’t acting in isolation. She’s part of a network of people all barely
holding themselves together. This is where Johansson’s script shines. She never forces
the metaphor; she lets the characters reveal it. The film becomes a study not only of
the pain of losing someone, but of the different strategies we invent to keep moving
forward, some useful, some damaging, all human.

The supporting cast enriches the film’s emotional ecosystem. Erin Kellyman is a
breakout here, warm, grounded, and sharp, while Ejiofor plays David with such restraint
that his silence becomes its own form of grief. Jessica Hecht and Rita Zohar add layers
as fellow group members walking their own delicate lines between community and
judgment. Will Prince, as the young man who tries to help Eleanor, is tender without
being cloying.

What works wonderfully is Johansson’s instinct not to overplay any of this. She’s not
interested in significant, cathartic breakdowns. She lets grief exist the way it does in
real life, messy, private, half-spoken, and sometimes spilling out sideways. Eleanor’s
internal landscape: a life filled with shadows of what used to be, yet still capable of
holding pockets of light.

The pacing occasionally drifts into stagnation in the second act. Scenes linger a bit too
long, and the narrative momentum softens. Johansson intentionally mirrors the rhythm
of grief. A handful of emotional moments feel underdeveloped, and a few dramatic
confrontations land lighter. The film also takes a risk with its central moral question
about the ownership of survivor stories. It’s thoughtful but delicate territory, and some
viewers may want a firmer stance or a more apparent consequence.

Still, the imperfections feel honest. Real grief is imperfect. Real people make mistakes,
cross lines, and try to repair them. The film respects that.

By its final moments, Eleanor the Great doesn’t offer redemption in the Hollywood
sense. What it offers instead is something better: a slight shift, a quiet acceptance, a
willingness to show up again. Johansson resists neat bows and cinematic healing arcs.
She honours the slow work of learning to live alongside pain rather than outrun it.
Eleanor the Great is a modest film in scale, but emotionally rich and unwavering in its
compassion. It’s about memory, loss, and the overwhelming loneliness. Also, the fragile
threads that pull us back toward connection. It’s about three people grieving differently,
but walking, hesitantly, toward one another. Scarlett Johansson has delivered a gentle,
thoughtful debut, led by an unforgettable performance from June Squibb.

It won’t be for everyone. But for those willing to meet its quiet honesty, Eleanor the
Great is precisely what its title promises. “Some losses crack you open gently. Others
silently hollow you out.”