A Real Pain (2025) - Jesse Eisenberg’s touching call to feel more deeply

Credit: allocine.fr

A Real Pain begs the question – how efficient is a film that tucks you into an emotional cocoon for an hour and a half, then releases you back to the world with very little to glance back at? Much like character Benji’s breakdowns, Jesse Eisenberg’s comedy drama about two cousins who join a tour about the Jewish experience in Poland is a quick outburst of emotion, short, sweet, painful, full of passion – and then it is gone, with only the distant memory of having felt something incredibly profound.

Eisenberg plays half of the duo on a trip to retrace their recently deceased grandmother’s roots – he is David, a neurotic, bumbling online adverts designer, father and husband, regulated by medication. Kieran Culkin meanwhile plays Benji, an erratic, jobless stoner with a free-spirited attitude and potty mouth. Though Eisenberg is as always extremely adept in the role of socially awkward outsider, the standout performance here is no doubt Culkin, off the wall, both charming and irritating, rude and kind, childish and wise. He has no qualms asking a stranger the most profound questions, for instance, or saying whatever is on his mind without artifice or shame. Arguably, this makes for some refreshing but rather uncomfortable encounters with their tour group, featuring guide James (Will Sharpe), recently divorced New Yorker Marcia (Jennifer Grey), Jewish-converted Eloge (Kurt Egyiawan), who survived the Rwandan genocide, and self-described “boring” couple Diane (Liza Sadovy) and Mark (Daniel Oreskes).

The contrast between Benji’s larger-than-life presence and the quiet David, who so often gets left behind and inevitably ends up labelled ‘the stuck-up one’, is central to A Real Pain. In one scene, while Benji is in the bathroom, David laments his relationship with his cousin, letting slip some particularly traumatic family history – what remains from his speech however is his unreconcilable feelings towards Benji, his pity for him, but also his desire to “be him”. It’s heartfelt, and moving, and one of the only times where David manages to capture attention – seconds later, he is upstaged by Benji taking to the piano in the restaurant where they are having dinner. “It’s him,” Marcia whispers, entranced. A Real Pain puts a twist on the happy (or as good as)/sad duo, using this dynamic as a gentle reminder that we all struggle and cope differently. This, interestingly, is where the two cousins’ tension lies. David has resorted to managing his OCD with regular pills. Benji, meanwhile wants to feel, and wants others to feel too – rare are characters who value a sense of truth and genuineness as Benji does. While he appears happy-go-lucky on the outside, he is in fact, as becomes quickly apparent, deeply troubled, concerned with the trials of what the tour means, and mainly should mean, to him and his fellow travellers. There are times where his reactions are incredibly refreshing as opposed to symptomatic of his mental illness – he accuses his cousin of being unfeeling when he used to cry at everything. He criticises the tour group for happily ignoring their privilege of being in first class on a train set for Lublin, when their ancestors have so recently been carted around like cattle and sent to their deaths. He berates kindly guide James for making his tour too much about the stats and not enough about the human experience. It’s an uncomfortable scene, one that makes you curl your toes as David does – but Benji raises some incredibly pertinent questions, ones that, despite his lack of social decorum, push the tour group to think and feel more deeply.

His outbursts are short and contained – afterwards, he will reiterate his feelings in a calmer manner or forget about it altogether, leaving behind a trace of passion he has very little recollection of expressing. Likewise, in the moment, A Real Pain is truly strong – Eisenberg has created a story that allows everyone to dare to feel, that is beautiful and raw all at once. Nevertheless, it is also quick to disappear from the mind. This is perhaps a bad sign in some cases, but for A Real Pain, it fulfils its central prophecy – just because you don’t remember something afterwards doesn’t mean it wasn’t genuine at the time.