What if Norma Desmond found joy in finding and playing the small roles rather than yanking back the spotlight by any means necessary, and belting out Eydie Gormé’s rendition of I Don’t Care? This is the underlying hypothesis of The Debut, London Film Festival’s closing film and third time feature by writer-director Jesse Eisenberg. In the opening scene, Mona Friedman (Julianne Moore at 110%) auditions for an am-dram musical production at the local Brook theatre. Her reasons are simultaneously blurry and clear to us, the audience: her non-existent relationship with her husband (Patrick Fabian), who might as well be an extra on Mad Men, and the impending departure – and empty nest syndrome – of her twins all point towards a crisis, one that Mona keeps under lock and key. She gets the role only after Serena Cherry (theatre royalty Bernadette Peters) unexpectedly drops out and is subsequently pulled into rehearsals with other affable persons, including Halle Bailey’s Stef and Eldar Isgandarov’s Piotr, who make her feel at home. Less welcoming however is director Jerry (Paul Giamatti), known for “being hard on everyone” and who pushes Mona to unravel her “prim and proper” self to unleash her absolute best (and quite possibly her worst).
Eisenberg is known for films that capture the human condition (his last feature A Real Pain is still so evocative that one of the Mozart pieces is my alarm clock ringtone), and The Debut is no exception. Eisenberg adds another skill to his writer-actor-director’s act by providing music and lyrics to the musical-within-his-musical, a take seemingly inspired by both Rent with instead, the tenants in Rear Window, and which coexists nicely with the score by Emile Mosseri, a blend of whimsical and hard-edged beats. His cast all are in top shape, with Giamatti’s character almost an evolution of his previously nominated Paul Hunham in Alexander Payne’s The Holdovers. One of the biggest highlights is the opening credits and typography of the film, a love letter to The Apartment (1960) and a marquee on Broadway, as well as a scene that shall merely be labelled “The Exercise”, and which earned a raucous round of applause in the cinema. The Debut takes a simple premise and expands upon it with questions never before asked, and provides evidence to a lyric that Cynthia Erivo sang at the Emmys in 2025: if you really wanna fly, it’s our stories and our songs that let us soar. It could not have been a more perfect conclusion to London Film Festival 2026, where with its equal parts’ wholesome energy and tender-hearted relevancy of life and turning points, one might return to rewatch over and over. I wouldn’t be surprised if people started belting out its songs once they become readily available – I’ve already picked mine.
The Debut screened at the London Film Festival and will be released in UK cinemas on 15 January 2027.
