![‘The Accompanist’ Review: Susan Sarandon Gives A Tender, Hard-Edged Performance In Zach Woods’ Moving Dramedy [Tribeca]](https://cdn.theplaylist.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/15101932/The-Accompanist-Clean-16x9-02.jpg "‘The Accompanist’ Review: Susan Sarandon Gives A Tender, Hard-Edged Performance In Zach Woods’ Moving Dramedy [Tribeca]")
It’s probably about time to start rotating Susan Sarandon into the carousel of lifetime achievement award prizes. The Oscar-winning actress, who will turn 80 later this year, has been a fixture on screen since breaking out over half a century ago in “The Rocky Horror Picture Show.” It wouldn’t be fair to declare “The Accompanist” the culmination of her long career, but Sarandon’s scene-stealing turn will give plenty of cherries for editors to top a career-in-review highlight reel.
As Sylvia, a single septuagenarian New Jerseyan, Sarandon cuts an imposing profile as one badass bubbe. Her default position is a gleefully irreverent Borscht Belt-style affinity for punchy one-liners and corny prop humor. She delivers these barbs sharply but not edgily, as if to provoke for the sole purpose of transgressing norms of political correctness.
This comforting, but never coddling, presence turns out to be just what the young Emily (Everly Carganilla) needs during a period of great turmoil. After a near-miss car accident with her ailing grandfather (Kevyn Morrow), a child protective services team led by the earnest Sarah (Aubrey Plaza) comes to place Emily in protective foster care with Sylvia. The confused child still desires to make contact with the one family member she has left, yet his continued hospitalization as dementia takes its toll and complicates their reunion.
![‘The Accompanist’ Review: Susan Sarandon Gives A Tender, Hard-Edged Performance In Zach Woods’ Moving Dramedy [Tribeca]](https://cdn.theplaylist.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/15101930/The-Accompanist-Clean-16x9-01-1024x538.jpg)
It’s to the immense credit of first-time feature director Zach Woods that he never lets the humor fully vanquish the immense pain and grief that underlie every interaction. While the vulnerable Emily tends to wear those unprocessed emotions on her sleeve, Sylvia has developed a more sophisticated system of camouflaging her devastation and loss. And though she might first regard her ward more like a stray cat than a surrogate child, Emily breaks down the defenses of her caretaker even as Sylvia tries to deny or deflect the impact.
At 110 minutes, “The Accompanist” is longer than the usual intergenerational dramedy. Occasionally, that length is felt, but Woods makes an excellent case for needing more time. The artist, whose own comedy tends to be live-wire and quick-witted, leaves a lot of dead air in the interactions between Emily and Sylvia. The goofy quasi-grandparent act is not just barreling over the unwitting audience at every turn. There’s ample space left for revelation as the two new housemates learn how to live and love one another.
A challenge for the film is that Woods’ script does not have a whole lot more to tell viewers about Emily than the tragedy befalling her. Apart from a twitch, the child protagonist has no personality beyond “in the system.” Carganilla does a convincing job of rendering her character’s pre-adolescent angst as raw and real. Though “The Accompanist” revolves around her experience, the writing provides no reason to root for her beyond the naturally activated protective instincts for children in peril.
Better fleshing out this character might have made for a better use of Woods’ energy than some of the more formalistic flourishes he adds to the film. There’s plenty of first film-itis on display in “The Accompanist,” most notably an isolated sequence of magical realism that never culminates in anything other than a nice moment. A recurring motif of expressionistic dance sequences has a little more relevance to the plot, as a third-act disclosure reveals, but it never quite syncs stylistically with the rest of the film.
Luckily, “The Accompanist” also has more than enough time spent with humans talking to other humans as they sort through a difficult situation. Sarandon, as well as Plaza in her small but meaningful supporting part, fill the frame with their weariness and wisdom alike. Their powerful pathos ensures that the film’s often sensationalized subject matter always feels grounded.
Woods honors their contributions accordingly by refusing to slap an artificial happy ending on “The Accompanist.” The film ends not with an obvious plot resolution but on a beat of mutual recognition between Emily and Sylvia of their shared brokenness. The moment really belongs to the latter character, and it draws out so much of what has made Susan Sarandon such a towering screen presence for decades. She brings a hard-edged reality that paradoxically feels like a tender embrace all at once. [B]
“The Accompanist” premiered at the 2026 Tribeca Festival.
