The best, and most promising, films from this past January’s Sundance Film Festival were “Didi,” “Love Lies Bleeding,” “I Saw the TV Glow,” and “A Real Pain.”
Jesse Eisenberg won the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award for “A Real Pain,” which he also directed, and the film went on to be bought by Searchlight for a cool $10 million. It was one of, if not the, most critically acclaimed film of the festival.
This morning, Searchlight revealed that “A Real Pain” will open in limited release on October 10. This means they have Oscar hopes for this film, which is a minimalist character study about two mismatched cousins, David (Eisenberg) and Benji (Kieran Culkin), who reunite for a tour of Poland to honor their grandmother. However, older tensions resurface against the backdrop of their family’s holocaust history.
The cast is rounded out by Will Sharpe, Jennifer Grey, Ellora Torchia, Kurt Egylawan, Liza Sadovy, and Daniel Oreskes. It’s not a showy film, at all. Eisenberg actually borrows heavily from Linklater’s “Before Sunset” in the way he gets his 84-minute film to be carried purely via dialogue.
In terms of awards, Culkin will be a Supporting Actor contender, he’s great, and Original Screenplay (Eisenberg) will be in play. Best Picture is also doable, especially if more critics jump onboard the ‘Real Pain’ bandwagon come October — the film currently has an 84 on Metacritic.
It might also be Searchlight’s top priority this year. Their other big films of 2024 include “Kinds of Kindness,” “Nightbitch” and “In the Blink of an Eye.”