Poland

A Real Pain utilizes the familiar tourist trip as a convincing canvas. Nailing down the charmingly Bohemian Benji (Kieran Culkin) by booking a conventional tour by the more conventional cousin David (Jesse Eisenberg), made sense. It was a perfect vehicle for allowing their dynamics, personalities, the themes of memory and trauma tourism, to unfold. The exposition in this screenplay was a master class, even though the actors are laying versions of themselves, or because of it. It’s a neat sleight of hand to turn a character you think you know into one entirely invented. As fun as Benji was and as envious as the more straitlaced and neurotic David got, the tragedy of Benji’s character pierced deeply. He endeared and broke and enraged you in equal measure. We never really find out why Benji has been cast adrift in life, and we don’t need to. We meet him where he is and worry for what is next. Just enough is given to make it real and utterly palpable.