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'A Real Pain' wins rave reviews
''A Real Pain,'' written, directed by and starring Jesse Eisenberg, follows a pair of cousins (Eisenberg and Kieran Culkin) on a trip through Poland to honor their late grandmother, who survived the Holocaust.
We’re still months away from Academy Award nominations being announced — but it’s already a safe bet that "A Real Pain" will show up in several categories.
The dramedy — which was written, directed by, and stars Jesse Eisenberg — follows a pair of cousins (Eisenberg and Kieran Culkin) on a trip through Poland to honor their late grandmother, who survived the Holocaust.
"This movie started as a story of these two guys going to Mongolia, which was loosely based on a short story I had written for Tablet Magazine," recalls Eisenberg of shaping the script. "They meet at the airport, they have this contentious relationship. They fly into Russia and ultimately to Mongolia. And I was, like, 30 pages into the movie when I realized, this is not gonna work."
Changing the location to Poland meant shooting the film there — an unforgettable experience for co-star and "Dirty Dancing" icon Jennifer Grey.
"It was stunning and impactful and beautiful and painful and important," Grey tells FOX 5. "Just the adventure of being in a foreign country where I could not learn the language, I couldn't find my way around with Google Maps … I would just be lost for hours."
Emmy Award nominee Will Sharpe ("The White Lotus") also stars in "A Real Pain," which opens in select theaters on Nov. 1 from Searchlight Pictures. To hear more from the stars, click the video player in this article.