A Real Pain

Not long after summer release Treasure, another internationally produced dramedy tackling Jewish Americans traveling to Poland in order to get acquainted with ancestral history is hitting cinema screens. Both films premiered within mere weeks of each other at festivals at the start of 2024, with A Real Pain’s Sundance debut ahead by a nose.

To honour their late grandmother, cousins David and Benji join a guided memorial tour through Warsaw and Lublin, before heading off on their own to a smaller village to visit the house she grew up in. Reverently trying to connect to the pain of her past, the two men are prompted to avow themselves their own struggles in life.

In his second feature as a director, Jesse Eisenberg also cast himself in a co-starring role, equipped with all the neurotic tendencies one has come to associate with the characters he plays. His overthinking David is well-suited to complement an over-feeling Benji, portrayed by Kieran Culkin. Both actors have a similar nervous energy (which makes for credible family relations) but while this causes the former to retreat into himself, it translates into extraversion for Culkin’s protagonist, creating an absorbing dynamic.

Through their sensitive performances and joyful rapport, the comedic bits work well. On occasion, the turnaround to address tragic elements can appear a bit out of the blue, since there is no excess fat in the runtime of 90 minutes, but overall the script finds a successful equilibrium between the darker themes surrounding trauma, and the light tone upon which the film chiefly operates.

A Real Pain proves that even crowd-pleasing forms of entertainment can grow within its audience. Through passionate and personal decisions, Eisenberg’s latest feat manages to elicit laughter, before bequeathing its viewers with a number of punchy questions about accounting for the past, the toll it can take on mental health, and an incessant guilt regarding one’s own privilege.

Selina Sondermann

Read more reviews from our London Film Festival coverage here.

For further information about the event visit the London Film Festival website here.

Watch the trailer for A Real Pain here: