TELLURIDE – How does a dog deal with death? How does a pet deal with the death of any of its human companions for that matter? That is the tantalizing question a character asks toward the beginning of Scott McGehee and David Siegel‘s “The Friend,” a world premiere at the 2024 Telluride Film Festival. A drama about a writer (Naomi Watts) coping with the suicide of her longtime friend (Bill Murray) and how she comes to terms with his death after the responsibility of watching over his Great Dane is thrust upon her. Disappointingly, this result is not anywhere near as intriguing as the aforementioned query suggests it might be.
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Adapted from Sigrid Nunez‘s National Book Award-winning novel, the film centers on Iris (Watts), a successful writer who pays her bills as a college professor while working on her next book (yes, it’s yet another in a long line of writer focused movies). Her decades-long friend and celebrated author, Walter (Murray), has unexpectedly killed himself, and it has completely unnerved her. Walter passes away with three marriages under his belt, and none of his exes seem to get along situating Iris as a sort of a neutral Switzerland among all of them. Making things more complicated is the fact Walter’s twentysomething daughter from a fourth mother, Val (Sarah Pidgeon), is also in the mix (and not all the wives know of her existence).
When Walter’s last wife, Barbara (Noma Dumezweni), asks Iris to shelter Apollo (Bing), his six-year-old rescue, she immediately says no. First off, her building forbids it. Secondly, she’s, wonderfully, a cat person. From her perspective, this is simply an impossible request. Barbara doesn’t leave her much choice, however, and Iris is soon attempting to balance her work commitments with figuring out how to take care of a massive dog. It doesn’t help that the friendly building manager (Felix Solis) is forced to report her canine violation to the landlord. Iris has taken over a rent-control apartment that her father had lived in for decades. If she keeps Apollo for too long she risks eviction. It appears the clock is ticking.
As Naomi’s character battles writer’s bloc to finish her novel “Eastern Bloc” (yes, that’s the title) she also procrastinates finishing what could be a lucrative collection of Walter’s letters. That’s where Val, who never had the relationship with her father she’d hoped for comes in. Val starts to dive into his E-mails, surprising Iris with some of the more intimate notes he’d sent her years prior. Were Walter and Iris more romantically close than they let on? The movie also dips its toes into sexism in the literature profession by showcasing Iris’ one male college student (Owen Teague) who can’t keep his foot out of his mouth when critiquing his female classmates. That storyline, in particular, feels redundant when considering why Walter was forced to resign from his teaching position years earlier (and an oddly meta choice for Murray after what occurred on the set of the shuttered feature “Being Mortal”).
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While Watts does her best to carry the movie through some mundane, repetitive plot devices and uninspired filmmaking, it’s Bing who keeps your attention. When the movie lags – and boy does it – Bing has a natural charisma that some of the more recent cinematic dog standouts such as “Anatomy of a Fall’s” Messi or “The Artist’s” Uggie (RIP) can’t match. The camera simply loves Bing, and there are moments (some scripted, some we’re assuming not) that are almost wondrous in what he achieves on screen. And, full disclosure, despite this critic being a lifelong and proud “cat person,” we’d admittedly adopt Bing in a heartbeat. For a canine to pull that off? A gigantic Great Dane no less? That’s some genuine talent right there.
The stakes are also increasingly low. Will Iris keep Apollo? Will she find a peace with Walter she didn’t know she needed? Will she finish any of her books on time? Will she keep her apartment? Will Apollo, whose old age for a dog is scarily mentioned again and again, survive before the credits roll? As “The Friend” rounds the home stretch, one thing is for sure, it’s certainly not hard to be rooting for the dog. Regrettably, any sympathy the film has mustered is diminished by at least three, maybe four, additional endings that are frustratingly superfluous. These never-ending epilogues add nothing to what has come before it and, in many ways, curtail any emotional heights the film has garnered to this point. Sadly, for worse, it all just goes to the dogs. [C]