Good Grief
Following the great success of “Schitt’s Creek,” Dan Levy must have been wondering what to do next with his career. So it seems fitting that his first feature film as director is also about what comes next moving on when a major chapter closes, whether you want to or not.
Levy has a strong presence on screen he’s an incredibly natural, affable performer but he struggles a bit to find his voice as a writer and director with “Good Grief,” a small scale exploration of the impact of loss that pushes too many buttons too hard and leaves some characters underdeveloped. When this well cast dramedy lets its people breathe, when it allows them to simply exist, it illuminates what kind of filmmaker Levy could become; it’s a promising start for the Emmy winner in movies, even if I wish he’d trust his actors (and his audience) more in future projects.
“Good Grief” opens at a Christmas party thrown by Marc (Levy) and his husband Oliver (Luke Evans), who is described as one of those writers whose every book gets turned into “The Hunger Games” or “Twilight.” Indeed, Oliver is so beloved that he has to rush off to a book signing at the Louvre later that night, thus compelled, he takes leave of the party early. As Marc and others watch from the window, lights from responding cop cars announce the car crash that will kill Oliver and send Marc spiraling into grief. He’s been here before: Early in the film, Marc mentions how neatly he skirted around facing his mother’s death head on by getting together with Oliver. And he has something of a habit of trying to label himself early on, he calls himself an orphan and now widower but the best parts of “Good Grief” work quietly against such simple terms; they reveal how everyone is more than even they know.
The actual drama of “Good Grief” comes a year after Oliver’s death, when Marc finally gets up the nerve to open his Christmas card from 12 months ago and discovers that Oliver was confessing to an affair and wanted to talk about their future. What happens to grief when it collides with betrayal? Among other twists, Marc finds out that Oliver had an apartment in Paris, where he was headed the night he died to meet up with his lover. In the interest of tying off a few emotional loose ends, Marc goes to France with his two best friends, Sophie (Ruth Negga) and Thomas (Himesh Patel), a pair who have their own struggles but seem genuinely interested only in bringing some peace to their buddy even if he won’t tell them why they’re going on this trip because, you know, movie.
Levy said he wanted to make a film about a family that isn’t really a family, and that comes through in the performances by Negga and Patel. However, this is also one of the script’s downfalls: You don’t get to know these people as much as you should. Yes, they have their own arcs, but they’re mostly a reflection of Marc’s growth and so is his new relationship in Paris, when this movie starts to drag. New love for Marc is fair enough, but it feels forced; it’s an excuse for him to define old relationships through someone else and not take the sort of risks “Good Grief” could have with him finding his way alone. Levy’s script often seems as lost as its protagonist; it reaches for plot threads and cliches to give itself momentum.
“Good Grief” has a habit of sinking into its lead’s melancholy too much another reason Sophie and Thomas don’t feel real. They’re just reflections of Marc’s journey. This is a movie where somebody puts on Neil Young’s “Only Love Can Break Your Heart,” which is loaded with commentary about what has happened or will happen here but also completely expected. Actually, “Good Grief” could have gotten away with more melodrama than it does, instead, it gets stuck between two stools not emotionally fraught enough to be whatever you call what its supporting characters are doing but also too flatly realistic.
Still: I care enough about these broken people to keep watching them break stuff. I am excited to see what Levy does next (and I would watch Ruth Negga play anything). “Good Grief” works best when it plays toward the strengths of all involved but spends too much time merely existing at an OK level.
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