You would expect nothing more than cringe when it comes to oddball actor Jesse Eisenberg’s directorial debut, and that is exactly what we get in “When You Finish Saving the World,” which plays like a mix of Nicole Holofcener and Todd Solondz.
Eisenberg’s film zeroes in on a dysfunctional suburban family, Evelyn (Julianne Moore) and her son Ziggy (Finn Wolfhard), she runs a shelter for survivors of domestic abuse, while he’s obsessed with trying to impress his politically engaged classmate, Lila — the problem is, he doesn’t know a thing about politics.
Ziggy performs pop-oriented original songs with his acoustic guitar for his “fans” online and he keeps trying to impress Lila by telling her that he has 20,000 followers. She couldn’t care less.
Meanwhile, Evelyn has her own person to obsess about. At the shelter she meets Angie and her teenage son, Kyle, who seek refuge from the abusive man they’ve run away from. Evelyn envies their tightly knit bond, something she's missing with her own reclusively hormonal son.
Wolfhard and Moore are excellent in their respective roles, delivering strong and parallel performances. They try hard to prevent their characters from veering into caricature and that’s a balancing act in itself since Eisenberg’s screenplay borrows heavily from Todd Solondz’s awkward movies.
Eisenberg is trying to explore the complicated relationships between mother and child. And yet, the narcissism these characters exude always keeps you at a distance. There is no self-awareness to Ziggy and Evelyn’s narcissism; these are such stringently awkward and despicable people, that forming a whole narrative around them is probably the ballsiest, and most misguided, thing about Eisenberg’s movie. [C+]
This is the adaptation of the nonfiction book by Dan Schilling and Lori Longfritz. It wrapped production in February and has been in post-production ever since. The film test-screened a few months ago.