
Supported by Wiltshire Council’s Future High Streets Fund
The Best in Classic & Independent Cinema
Programme
Friday 11th April at 8pm​
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A REAL PAIN (2024) Cert 15
Jesse Eisenberg, Kieran Culkin, Will Sharpe, Jennifer Grey. Directed by Jesse Eisenberg.
This poignant, often humorous gem about pain, suffering, and the complexities of family bonds has won well-deserved praise for actor-writer-director Jesse Eisenberg. However, the real star of the show is Kieran Culkin, an Oscar-winning force of nature as the exuberant, free-spirited but also infuriating drifter Benji. Culkin and Eisenberg are cousins, once close as children but now living very different lives in different cities in the US. They reunite for the first time in months for a memorial pilgrimage to the birthplace of their beloved Jewish grandmother in Poland, where other members of their family perished in the camps. The cousins couldn't be more dissimilar: Eisenberg is consumed by social embarrassment and jittery discomfort while Culkin is warm-hearted, unfiltered and open to every experience. Yet, at its core, the film argues that the path to happiness and fulfillment is not as easy as it first appears. Eisenberg’s masterful direction strikes a delicate balance between irreverence and raw emotion, mixing rapid-fire comedy with moments where the weight of history and the burden of the past feel almost unbearable.
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