This isn’t the easiest moment in history to be launching a film exploring its author’s Jewish heritage, thanks to the violent repercussions of events in the Middle East, but the historical baggage that comes with that heritage is all part of Eisenberg’s theme. Set to an eloquent and frequently melancholy soundtrack of Chopin’s piano music, A Real Pain is a bittersweet story about two Jewish cousins, Benji and David Kaplan (Kieran Culkin and Eisenberg), who take a trip to Poland in memory of their beloved grandmother, a recently-deceased Holocaust survivor. Beneath the wisecracks and one-liners there’s a subtle and penetrating analysis of family bonds and the burden of shared history.

The film’s gentle ripple of underlying sadness stems from the fact that the cousins were previously very close, but have drifted apart. They’re about as dissimilar as it’s possible to be, but glimpses of their odd-couple bond gradually resurface as the narrative develops. Eisenberg’s David is quiet and introverted, but is successful as both family man and in his Manhattan-based career in computing. On the other hand, we gradually learn that Benji is drifting rootlessly through his life out in the suburbs. He’s searching desperately for something meaningful, and is struggling to keep himself on the rails. He has been hit hard by his grandmother’s death, confessing that “she was just my favourite person in the world.”

In any event, the role gives Culkin carte blanche to charge recklessly through the gears, in a bravura performance which gives the film its centrifugal force. Some of the time he’s a babbling extrovert who effortlessly dominates any social gathering, for instance persuading everybody in their touring party to pose for selfies on a statue commemorating the Warsaw Uprising, but the flipside is that he can’t tell where the boundaries are (and has little interest in finding them). David is aghast when they’re heading for the boarding gate for their flight to Poland, and Benji cheerfully announces that he’s carrying a stash of dope (“I got some good shit for when we land”.)

One moment everybody loves Benji, then suddenly he becomes an insufferable asshole. He’s prone to wildly inappropriate outbursts, like the moment when the tour party are travelling in a first class railway carriage and Benji goes into an emotionally incontinent display of guilt about the contrast with his Jewish antecedents being transported to death camps in cattle trucks.

Fortunately their travelling companions (who include Dirty Dancing veteran Jennifer Grey, pictured top, and Kurt Egyiawan as a survivor of the Rwandan genocide) show superhuman patience, not least their English tour guide James (Will Sharpe), who graciously accepts Benji’s tactless critique of his guiding technique (Sharpe and Eisenberg pictured above). The fact that James is a scholar of East European Studies from Oxford University, not Jewish himself but “fascinated by the Jewish experience”, is a crafty little comic narrative all of its own.

It’s a difficult film to categorise, being part comedy, part road movie, part psychotherapy session and part personal memoir. Perhaps Woody Allen might have called it a “situation tragedy”. It’s a clever, complex piece, but Eisenberg has made it look breezily simple.

For the past two and a half years, the battle for the future of L.A.’s Fairfax Avenue corridor has been raging between economic powerhouses.

Hackman Capital Partners, which owns and operates nearly two dozen studio properties, has been seeking to expand and modernize the historic 25-acre site known as Television City, where “American Idol,” “All in the Family” and scores of other shows were filmed.

Two neighborhood giants have pushed back against the project: A.F. Gilmore Co., which owns the Original Farmers Market, and the Grove LLC, which owns the popular Grove shopping center developed by billionaire Rick Caruso. Those businesses joined with neighborhood groups who say the project is too big and, without changes, will make local traffic much worse.

The debate over the $1-billion project has played out amid a serious downturn in the region’s entertainment industry, with studios shifting film and television production to Georgia, New Mexico and other out-of-state locations.

On Tuesday, the Los Angeles City Council sided with Hackman, voting 13-0 to approve the TVC project, including its environmental impact report, its tract map and new zoning for the site. Councilmember Katy Yaroslavsky, who represents the area, described the development as critical to the future of the local entertainment industry.

Yaroslavsky said out-of-state production has cost numerous Angelenos their jobs, tearing families apart and hurting restaurants, catering companies and other businesses.

“This project represents an opportunity, a real opportunity, to keep Los Angeles as the entertainment capital of the world,” she said. “We cannot let this opportunity pass us by. The stakes are simply too high.”

Zach Sokoloff, Hackman’s senior vice president, expressed gratitude for the council’s vote. That decision, he said, will be a critical part of the effort to rebuild the industry, along with Gov. Gavin Newsom’s push to expand Hollywood production tax credits.

The TVC project is expected to add 980,000 square feet of offices, soundstages, production facilities and retail space on the property, located on Fairfax at Beverly Boulevard. A 15-story office tower is planned for the interior of the campus. When fully built out, the facility would occupy nearly 1.7 million square feet.

Yaroslavsky said she worked with Hackman to steadily reduce the size of the project over the past year, removing one tower entirely. But detractors have remained unconvinced, saying the project is still out of scale with its surroundings.

Shelley Wagers, co-chair of Neighbors for a Responsible TVC Development, said the developer provided “minimal concessions” to the nine businesses and community groups that filed challenges to the planning commission’s approval of the project. She contends that the project is more about the development of office space and less about studio operations.

“Given the flawed process and spotty administrative record, litigation is both inevitable and likely to be successful,” Wagers said after the vote.

Hackman Capital acquired the CBS Television City property in 2019, filing its application to redevelop the site two years later. In 2022, A.F. Gilmore and the Grove expressed “profound concern” about the development plan, calling it a “massively scaled, speculative development which, if approved, would overwhelm, disrupt, and forever transform the community.”

That same year, the Grove and A.F. Gilmore co-founded the Beverly Fairfax Community Alliance, using it to rally the neighborhood against Hackman’s project. Over a two-year span, the two companies poured nearly $1.2 million into the alliance’s public relations efforts, purchasing newspaper ads, billboard space and glossy mailers warning that the project would bring intolerable traffic and 20 years of construction.

Hackman fired back last spring, filing a complaint with the city Ethics Commission that called the Beverly Fairfax Community Alliance a “shell funded by private commercial interests.” In a letter to the commission, Hackman attorney Jim Sutton said the public deserved to know whether the alliance and its affiliated groups are “merely a ‘front’ for private commercial interests.”

Jason Kaune, an attorney for the Beverly Fairfax Community Alliance, said in an email that his client has complied with the city’s ethics rules, disclosing its spending on a quarterly basis. The Grove and A.F. Gilmore are the alliance’s sole funders, he said.

The alliance has been providing logistical support to Neighbors for a Responsible TVC Development, a coalition of community groups that includes the Beverly Wilshire Homes Assn. and Save Beverly Fairfax.

Architect’s rendering of the proposed renovations of the Television City property, located in the city’s Fairfax district.

(Foster + Partners and Television City)

Wagers, who co-chairs the neighbors organization, pushed back on the criticism from Hackman, saying she and her neighbors are acting out of concern for the Beverly Fairfax community — and are “not on anyone’s payroll.” She accused the developer of using concerns about film production to push through a project that is “wildly out of scale and out of character” with the neighborhood.

Stan Savage Jr., president & CEO of A.F. Gilmore Co., lodged his own concerns, telling the planning commission last year that traffic to and from the TVC project would make the Original Farmers Market, a major tourist destination, more difficult to reach.

“What the developer is proposing will have substantial and irrevocable consequences, damaging the small businesses of the market,” he told the commission.

Other business leaders have rallied around the TVC project. Jacqueline Canter, co-owner of Canter’s Deli, told the council on Tuesday that she has attended every City Hall hearing on the project to show her support.

“That’s how important this project is for the community,” she said. “TVC will create new jobs, which means more customers, more lunch orders and more business.”

The TVC project also drew support from construction trade unions and from the Entertainment Union Coalition, which represents 160,000 workers in Hollywood, including actors, directors and a wide array of behind-the-scenes players. In a letter to the city, the coalition warned that production work is so scarce that a significant number of workers face losing their homes — and are looking to move elsewhere.

“They aren’t choosing to leave Los Angeles,” the coalition wrote. “But in order to take care of themselves and their families, they will have to.”

Under the TVC proposal, Hackman would preserve and restore the 1952 Television City studio building designed by the architectural firm Pereira & Luckman — a move endorsed by the L.A. Conservancy, a historic preservation group.

Lawyers for the Grove and A.F. Gilmore did not immediately respond to questions about whether they will sue the city over the council’s vote. Lawyers for the companies have assailed the city’s handling of the approval process, saying it failed to comply with the California Environmental Quality Act.

Yaroslavsky described the final project as a compromise and noted that Hackman agreed to spend $6.4 million on community initiatives, including upgrades to nearby Pan Pacific Park. She also voiced hope that the various factions would avoid a drawn-out court battle.

Settlement conversations have already begun between the developer and critics of the project, Yaroslavsky said.

“I think they’re going to settle quickly. That’s my sense, that’s my hope,” she said. “I’m projecting optimism.”

On the index of possible spoil alert sins one could make about the erotic thriller Babygirl, perhaps the least objectionable is that which most people already know: The film belongs to the very rare species of film literally ending with the big “O.” Nicole Kidman’s final orgasmic aria of ecstasy caps off a film which dares to tell a morally slippery tale. But for all the high points and gray zones of writer-director Halina Reijn’s intriguing film, the least ambiguous moment arrives at its climax. So to speak.

The central premise is a maze-like anatomy of an affair, between Kidman’s Romy Mathis, a fierce but also mid-life conflicted 50-year-old CEO of a robotics company, and a sly, handsome twenty-something intern Samuel (Harris Dickinson, who will appear at the Virtuosos Tribute at this year’s Santa Barbara International Film Festival). Sparks fly, and mutually pursued seduction ensues behind closed doors and away from the prying eyes of her family (and husband, played by Antonio Banderas).

From the outset, though, it’s apparent that nefarious sexual exploits, though those do liberally spice up the film’s real estate, are not the primary subject. It’s more a film steeped with power-play gamesmanship, emotional extortion, and assorted manipulations of class and hierarchical structures. Samuel teases a thinly veiled challenge to her early on, “I think you like to be told what to do.” She feigns shock, but soon acquiesces, and what transpires on their trail of deceptions and shifting romantic-sexual relationship includes a twist in which he demands her submission in exchange for him not sabotaging her career trajectory.

Kidman, who gives another powerful performance in Babygirl, is no stranger to roles involving frank sexuality and complications thereof. She has excelled in such fragile and vulnerable situations, especially boldly in Gus Van Sant’s brilliant To Die For (also a May/October brand dalliance story), and Stanley Kubrick’s carnally acknowledged Eyes Wide Shut. Ironically or not, she finds herself in the most tensely abusive sex play as the wife of Alexander Skarsgård in TVs Big Little Lies.

Compared to those examples, Babygirl works a disarmingly easygoing line. For all of his presumed sadistic power playing, Dickinson — who turns in a nuanced performance in an inherently complex role — is often confused and sometimes be mused in the course of his actions or schemes. In an early tryst encounter, his domination play seems improvised and peppered with self-effacing giggles, while in a later, potentially creepier hotel scene, his will to wield power morphs into his state of vulnerable, almost child-like reliance on her good graces. The oscillating power play dynamics get further complicated.

Complications and genre schematics also play into the film’s very identity, in fresh ways. Dutch director (and actress) Reijn has dealt with erotically edgy material in the past, especially with her 2019 film Instinct. But, despite its echoes and shades of Fifty Shades of Gray and 9½ Weeks, Babygirl cleverly tweaks the standard “erotic thriller” format — with its dangerous passions and calculated upward arc of body heating — into unexpected places. At times, the thriller form itself softens around the edges, and we become more aware of the gender/workplace power structures at the heart of the film’s message.

But, message-wise, Reijn is not ham-fisted or didactic in her treatment of the subject. There is always room for caressing and redirecting the impulse, in the bedroom, boardroom, and cinematic storyboarding.

See trailer here.