ELEANOR THE GREAT (TIFF 2025) – Review by Valerie Kalfrin
June Squibb has entered the stage of her career where she’s regarded as a national treasure. The nonagenarian, who earned an Oscar nomination for 2014’s Nebraska, voiced Nostalgia in Inside Out 2, rose-colored glasses and all, and took on a scammer in 2024’s Thelma, earning an AWFJ Eda Award for Best Female Stunt Performance in the process.
Her latest venture, Eleanor the Great, is so-so in spots, but Squibb is a firecracker, dropping tart observations between poignant reflections on grief.
Eleanor is a sassy piece of work, living in Florida with Bessie (Rita Zohar, Unspoken), her lifelong best friend. The two rise at the crack of dawn, walk and stretch on the beach, and shop at their favorite grocery, where Eleanor knows the layout of the stockroom enough to direct a new employee where to find Bessie’s kosher pickles.
After Bess faints in the store, Eleanor ensures she won’t wait long to see a doctor by pretending Bess is somehow related to the hospital’s namesake. “You’re interesting enough,” Bess tsks. “You don’t have to lie about who you are.”
That’s put to the test once Bessie dies, sending Eleanor back to the New York City of her youth, only this time, she’s living with her divorced daughter, Lisa (Jessica Hecht, Tokyo Vice), and teenage grandson (Will Price, Poetic License). When an Uber driver says he lives on Staten Island, Eleanor gives him her condolences.
Lisa signs up Eleanor for a class at the local Jewish community center, but Eleanor mistakenly wanders into a Holocaust survivors’ support group. She tries to leave in embarrassment, but the other members mistake this for reluctance and encourage her to stay. So she shares a bit about Bessie’s past, adopting it as her own. The lie starts to take on a larger life once Nina (Erin Kellyman, Blitz), a journalism student observing the group, contacts Eleanor for more details.
Making her feature directing debut, Scarlett Johansson shepherds this ultimately gentle, compassionate story over tricky moments thanks to strong performances from Squibb and Kellyman, and by ensuring Bessie remains centered in viewers’ minds. Whenever one of Eleanor’s “memories” begins, the film cuts to Bessie speaking to Eleanor at their tiny kitchen table over sleepless nights, wracked with guilt over surviving when the rest of her family died.
There’s no question Eleanor’s lie is abhorrent, but to its credit, the script by Tory Kamen makes clear that Eleanor speaks Bessie’s truth not for attention but to keep Bessie’s memory alive. Squibb adds a subtlety to Eleanor, her prickliness a mask for loneliness as she struggles to relate to her family.
Nina, who lost her mother, is in a different but no less devastating stage of grief. Bonding with Eleanor gives her a solace that her newscaster dad (Chiwetel Ejiofor, The Life of Chuck) can’t manage. Their unusual friendship becomes the heart of the film, with Squibb and Kellyman creating genuine warmth and admiration in their scenes together. When Nina learns the truth—because she must—the hurt is palpable.
Viewers might wish Eleanor the Great had fleshed out Eleanor’s character beyond her barbs and the ruse, and the ending feels a little too neat, considering the seriousness of this deception. Yet the film shows Eleanor with such grace, it’s hard not to do that, too.
Ultimately, this is a film about grief, survival, and the power of stories conveyed with empathy and hope. While it’s not new to say that stories help the dead to live again, Eleanor the Great proves to be a tender reminder about how stories are essential to connection, even when they’re not our own.
