Not since the prime of Charles Grodin has anyone delivered onscreen discomfort quite like Jesse Eisenberg. Where Grodin’s brand of unease was laced with glowering anger, Eisenberg’s is informed by a far kinder personality. His general hesitancy when put up against even the most mundane worldly tensions inspires a sense of protectiveness. Eisenberg clearly knows this, based on how well he uses his standard emotional mode in A Real Pain, his second film as a writer-director.

Eisenberg plays David Kaplan, a middle class New Yorker with a contented marriage, a precociously cute child, and a perfectly fine job selling online advertising. He travels to Poland alongside Benji (Kieran Culkin), his cousin with whom he once enjoyed a thief-like thickness. These days, the two are more distance, in part because of geography (Benji lives in Vermont) but mostly due to aclear difference in their life paths. As David has settled into calm domesticity, Benji has clung onto his more devil-may-care ways.

The centerpiece of the European sojourn is a Holocaust tour of Poland, led by a young British scholar (Will Sharpe, very strong in a role that could have been a throwaway) and including a few other people who aren’t full prepared for Hurricane Benji. Benji is impulsive, and his intensely felt emotions are always right on the surface. Culkin knows this territory; Benji isn’t that far from Roman Roy, Culkin’s Succession character, or at least a version of the smart aleck character who hadn’t been warped by wealth and power. The performance is delivered at full force, which contrasts nicely with Eisenberg’s fidgety simmer and handful of moments when the guard comes down to reveal his own anguished feelings.

Eisenberg’s script is fittingly lean and direct, eschewing big, florid moments in favor of simpler truths. His directing is similarly understated, open to the action of each scene without aggressively underlining the points. The comedy comes from the temperament clashes, and Eisenberg is confident enough to let the scenes play out to let audience find what’s impactful and memorable. A Real Pain is warm, knowing, and poignant. Like the familial friends it follows, the film finds its way.