‘The Debut’ San Sebastian Review: Julianne Moore Lets Loose in Jesse Eisenberg’s Musical Comedy

After the very different A Real Pain, Jesse Eisenberg’s latest film, The Debut, works as both a tribute to and a gentle send-up of the musical-theater world. At its center is the peculiar story of a frustrated housewife whose life is turned upside down when, almost by accident, she gets the chance to appear in a musical. This is not a Broadway breakthrough, but a small community production staged at a modest theater in New Jersey. What matters, though, is not the show itself but what stepping onto a stage means to a woman who has spent her entire life being overlooked.

Julianne Moore plays Mona, an extremely shy woman who is largely invisible to both her husband (Patrick Fabian) and her college-age children. She decides to audition for Nosy Neighbors, a decidedly old-fashioned musical scheduled to open at the Brooks Theater in their hometown. Paul Giamatti plays Jerry, the demanding director in charge of the production and its actors’ coaching. And it is immediately obvious, from her disastrous audition, that Mona is nowhere near ready for the stage, even one as low-stakes as this. She is cut from the initial cast and goes back home to resume her life of being ignored, not only by her family but even by the couple’s friends.

But then the miracle happens. Serena Cherry (played by legendary musical-theater star Bernadette Peters), the actress originally cast in the role Mona auditioned for, drops out, leaving the part vacant. Since Mona is the only other person who auditioned for it —a supporting role written for an older actress, which naturally attracts fewer candidates— Jerry reluctantly gives it to her. It does not take him long to realize that Mona is nowhere near equipped for the job, or that she needs a great deal more training before she can play this tough building manager, a woman described as curt, abrasive and perpetually sour — pretty much the polar opposite of Mona herself.

The Debut is primarily about Mona’s training, and her struggle to climb out of her own “inner hole” and find the intensity the role requires. To do that, however, she has to start bringing to the surface years of pent-up frustration and anger. Eisenberg, who gives himself a small role here, gradually deepens Mona’s transformation through her relationship with Jerry and the hard-nosed methods he uses to draw the best possible performance out of her. What he does not anticipate is that the intensity and truth he is trying to unlock in Mona may end up being considerably more than he bargained for.

Eisenberg pokes fun at the customs and conventions of musical theater with obvious affection and an understanding of a genre he clearly loves. He gets plenty of mileage out of actors, directors and the entire ecosystem surrounding these kinds of productions. But ultimately, that world is a pretext for watching Mona —in an unspecified period that appears to be the late 1980s— rebel against the place she has always occupied within her family, and in almost every other corner of her life. The upheaval her transformation causes, both for herself and for those around her, is considerable. But the newfound ability to express herself, onstage and off, marks a clear before-and-after in her existence.

Moore is terrific, as always, moving from Mona’s initial shyness and self-consciousness to the uninhibited, emotionally charged woman she becomes under Jerry’s tutelage — and through her own particular way of absorbing and interpreting his advice. Eisenberg takes the actress through an enormous emotional range, while her character undergoes a similar process in her own way. The director also uses these shifts to make sly observations about actors’ egos, about the ideas of truth and realism in performance (never mind that this is a musical), and about the passion and devotion that keep these local theaters alive, whether or not they ultimately serve as training grounds for bigger things.

Without belaboring the film’s feminist dimension —the family ultimately plays a smaller role in the story than it initially seems, leaving that aspect somewhat underdeveloped— The Debut emerges as a blend of Woody Allen-esque comedy and retro musical, in which a love of theater and acting, with all their excesses and grandstanding, ultimately wins out. In Eisenberg’s world, acting is a form of therapy. It can leave plenty of collateral damage in its wake, but for the person going through it, the experience can be transformative. A film about art as a form of natural medicine.