‘Place to Be’ Review: Ellen Burstyn Is Radiant in Otherwise Lackluster Late-Life Drama

Venice: The latest small-scale drama from director Kornél Mundruczó is a simple affair, but the luminous Ellen Burstyn makes it a watchable one.

There is no such thing as a bad Ellen Burstyn performance. For starters, who else could deliver an utterly preposterous line like “all this astronaut dick has made you soft” in 2019’s risible “Lucy in the Sky”? The 93-year-old performer, who trained under the famed Lee Strasberg, represents one of the last living connections to the original American practitioner of Method acting. Her grasp on locating and conveying an inner motivation remains on vibrant display in “Place to Be,” a film that needs every last bit of life Burstyn can supply.

Because while there are no bad Ellen Burstyn performances, there are bad Ellen Burstyn movies. Or, at the very least, some aren’t commensurate with the actress’s level of talent and effort. “Place to Be” avoids total calamity thanks to how much space its star has just to exude liveliness and thoughtfulness. But no one will rank Kornél Mundruczó’s tender late-life drama, written by creative and life partner Kata Wéber, among the highest ranks of Burstyn’s most hallowed works.

The film’s opening shot, which pans across Burstyn’s Brooke Graham as she saunters between the headstones in a cemetery, does not exactly portend the sprightliest affair. An exposition-heavy meal with her two adult children, Molly (Pamela Anderson) and Ron (Murray Bartlett), reveals how little anyone expects of this recently widowed Chicago woman. They are not all that different from Wéber’s script, which offers little more than a pencil sketch of who Brooke is. To the film’s great fortune, Burstyn can do much of that heavy lifting herself in just a gaze or a pause.

Her son especially sees her as little more than a drain on his eventual inheritance, which he needs sooner rather than later to offset some poor financial decisions. Both siblings pose a united front, however, in trying to get their mother into a cushy assisted living facility where they can wipe their hands clean of any responsibility and guilt for her care. But Brooke still has life in her. That’s evident in both her mental acuity as well as her physical agility, demonstrated by her ease in climbing several flights of stairs to enter her spacious apartment.

But Brooke receives an unexpected call to adventure when a pigeon flies in her window one day. She releases the bird only to find it returns later that evening, prompting her to investigate whether the animal has an owner who might be seeking it. When she learns that the avian companion she comes to call “Intruder” actually belongs to a birder in Bushwick, Brooke sets out on a cross-country trip to reunite them.

“Place to Be” strains credulity with many plot developments along this incredible journey. Brooke often finds herself positioned like a damsel-in-distress, stranded without transportation or accommodation. She’s hardly a Luddite, though, sporting an Apple Watch and confidently brandishing her iPhone in many scenes. Her kids are plenty capable of using these devices to track her, too. But, in typically self-interested fashion, they don’t bother to use such capabilities until it directly affects them when Brooke misses their appointment at their desired new home.

That this senior citizen would depend so heavily on the kindness of strangers is perhaps less surprising than the identity of the stranger: Taika Waititi’s Nelson Green. This sleazy realtor and recent divorcé, whom she first encounters yelling at his ex in a train station, becomes Brooke’s unlikely companion on the path to rehome Intruder. She bails out the hot-headed traveler when his ticket won’t load for the conductor and continues to show Nelson undeserved grace, even when he pulls such shenanigans as leaving her alone to eat dinner so he can scroll dating apps in another room.

Mundruzcó finds a pleasant enough trip, stringing together small human moments the odd couple shares as they get to know each other. Burstyn is astonishing when she gets to be fully present as Brooke, be it sparring verbally with Nelson or triangulating her next steps to get Intruder off her hands. She’s incapable of hitting a false note, and she forces Waititi to raise his game as well. The Kiwi’s normally zany, winking charms feel notably more grounded opposite Burstyn’s gravitas.

Yet when “Place to Be” nods toward either the past or the future, it stumbles. The edit intercuts old film reels, both archival B-roll and seeming home movies, to hint at how all these new stimuli jog Brooke’s memory. The gambit proves little more than a cliché and sheds no further light on what these recollections offer the main story. That device’s failures pale in comparison to the head-fake of a “Harold and Maude”-style May/December romance between Brooke and Nelson. The film teases a more intimate connection between the pair throughout but frustratingly walks back from advancing this development as anything more than a tantalizing possibility.

But anything that disrupts the unfussy, uncomplicated energy of this adult drama would likely torpedo the whole enterprise. “Place to Be” commits first and foremost to just being nice and safe, eliminating any nuance or nastiness that might thwart the gentle empowerment of Brooke’s desire to live compassionately and independently. It’s hard not to feel like Burstyn’s talents are wasted on such a simplistic story, but her performance reminds audiences what a gift it is to see her still delivering new and brilliant work.

Grade: C+

“Place to Be” world premiered at the 2026 Venice Film Festival. It is currently seeking U.S. distribution.