The gimmicky title is doubly misleading: “The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby” is neither a mystery nor Beatles-themed, but it💞 🍰is an elegantly wrought tale of anguish.
In outline, the film is borderline trite, hauling in fam🀅iliar elements from many another minor-key indie dramas about loss and sorrow (it’s nearly the same film as “Rabbit Hole,” for which Nicole Kidman won a 2010 Oscar nomination). Its strength is in thꦛe tenderness and maturity with which first-time writer-director Ned Benson limns the pain of rookie restaurateur Conor (James McAvoy) and directionless former grad student Eleanor (Jessica Chastain), whose parents were Beatles fans.
Like many indies, the film delivers little plot, instead simply withholding a piece of information from the a🌸udience: the reason why Eleanor, a joyous presence in the opening scene, tries to kill herself in the next one. After recovering, she runs away from her husband, Conor,ꦬ though it doesn’t take a lot of work to figure out where she is (at her parents’ in Connecticut), and then enrolls in a class near his place in Greenwich Village. The true disappearance is that of her personality, erased by sadness.
As you’d expect in a film that contains Chastain and two other Oscar nominees — Viola Davis plays the kindly professor with endless reserves of patience and wisdom to impart to this random part-time student, while William Hurt and Isabelle Huppert play Eleanor’s parents — the movie is exquisitely acted, especially by Chastain, who gives yetඣ another performance of depth and understanding. Benson expertly keeps emotions cloaked and visible only in outline as we (very slowly) learn more about the couple’s history.
Again and again, Benson freshens a familiar story with crystalline moments that make us feel for these smart, recognizable characters. The couple’s madcap decision to dash out of a restaurant without paying seems crazily romantic, a lightly etched mot🔯if of b☂eautiful but short-lived fireflies turns out to be perfectly apt and a late admission by El’s father is a wrenching surprise. Even a fight in which Conor and a friend beat each other with kale plays like a beloved anecdote rather than a stagey grab for laughs.
Shallowly buried despair and a single secret aren’t usuallღy enough to sustain an entire film. It’s a tribute to Benson that he makes “Eleanor Rigby” ache and shimmer like a sublime concerto.