‘The Debut’: Jesse Eisenberg Praises Oscar Frontrunner Julianne Moore’s ‘Perfect Performance’ at NYFF

By Marlow Stern

Marlow Stern

Chief Correspondent

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You couldn’t imagine a more ideal setting for “The Debut” than Alice Tully Hall on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, where it had its New York premiere Wednesday evening as part of the New York Film Festival.

The third feature film from writer-director Jesse Eisenberg, and follow-up to his Oscar-winning “A Real Pain,” is set in 1990 and follows Mona Friedman (Julianne Moore), a timid, browbeaten housewife in Central Jersey who disrupts her mind-numbing routine by auditioning for the role of the janitor in a community theater production of the musical “Nosy Neighbors.” There, she finds community among her castmates (Halle Bailey and Colton Ryan among them) and clashes with her imperious director (the inimitable Paul Giamatti), as she falls deeper and deeper into character. Eisenberg’s film garnered considerable laughs — and applause — from the theater-going crowd at its starry NYFF screening that saw Eisenberg, the cast, producer Emma Stone and even Claire Danes in attendance.

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