Behind his air of eternal adolescent, the 38-year-old American comedian has more than one talent: he has already signed several plays, a book and writes regularly for the New Yorker.
His film, applauded Wednesday morning in a full house on the Croisette, is inspired by his audiobook of the same name, already rewarded in the United States in the prizes reserved for this type of work.
Jesse Eisenberg becomes attached to a mid-town American family, including mother, Julianne Moore, and son (Finn Wolfhard, seen in 'Stranger Things'), who believe in spreading good around them but are fueled by narcissism .
The neo-director engages in a delicious game of massacre with these characters who go straight into the wall of their illusions.
Eisenberg is all the more at ease in this kind of satire that he was at a good school, between Woody Allen (he toured in "To Rome with love" and "Café Society") and Noah Baumbach ("Les Berkman part ways").
To set the scene, Julianne Moore, director of a home for women in distress, weighed down by her lack of empathy, becomes infatuated with the son of one of her boarders and thinks of a better future for the person concerned, without him. ask his opinion.
The actress works wonders in the skin of this woman whose horizon does not have the contours of the great music she listens to but is rather limited to the mini-car she drives.
Her son, a budding musician with an ego inflated by his community of followers on social networks, decides to move on from post-adolescent refrains to a more committed repertoire to please the high school intellectual-rebel (the Somalo -Norwegian Alisha Boe).
The Canadian Finn Wolfhard, 19, is amazing.
Singing and holding a guitar is no problem for this true musician, whose aquiline face can be seen on one of the album covers ("Soda & Pie") of his band The Aubreys.
In the film, his parents called him Ziggy, like the double created by David Bowie and the high school student obviously chose a lightning bolt as his symbol, oblivious to the weight of the reference to "Aladdin Sane".
The father in this fractured family unit, played by Jay O. Sanders, impeccable second knife of US cinema, is also next to his shoes.
The scene where he tries to communicate with his son at the table is another great moment in the film.
A total of 11 films will be presented at Critics' Week.
The new general delegate, the critic Ava Cahen, entrusted the presidency of the jury to the Tunisian filmmaker Kaouther Ben Hania, noticed with "La Belle et la meute" (2017).
© 2022 AFP