The Friend Parent Guide

Iris and Walter (Naomi Watts and Bill Murray) have been best friends for decades. He’s a famous author; she’s a professor of creative writing. Blocked on her own novel, Iris is working with Walter’s daughter, Val (Sarah Pidgeon), to edit Walter’s letters for publication. Life might not be perfect, but it’s good.

Then Walter dies and turns Iris’s life upside down.

Fogged by grief, Iris is astonished when Walter’s widow Barbara (Noma Dumezweni) tells her that Walter wanted her to take charge of Apollo, his beloved dog.

This is no small request. Apollo is a massive Great Dane and Iris lives in a small, rent-controlled apartment in a pet-free building. To make things more difficult, Apollo is also grieving, which makes him both harder to live with and harder to reject or abandon. If Iris gives him up, she will break a treasured tie to Walter, but if she keeps the dog, she could lose her home.

Grief is a subject frequently canvased by filmmakers but The Friend manages to be compelling. Not just by charting the complex cocktail of sorrow, guilt and anger that follows suicide, but in focusing on the grief of a pet. Apollo’s wordless suffering is poignant; every bit as real as the heartache felt by Iris.

The film’s success in telling its deeply emotional tale comes down to a nuanced script and a stellar cast. Naomi Watts carries the film but the real star is Bing, the dog who acts as Apollo. This movie could easily have turned into Marmaduke-for-grownups. That it didn’t is partially due to Bing’s convincing portrayal of a grief-stricken Great Dane.

I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the writing in The Friend. Walter is no saint and his flaws are recognized by his friends and family, who grapple with their complex emotions at his death. They also struggle with their emotions about Walter’s impact on their lives – his two ex-wives, his widow, his illegitimate daughter – are testament to the challenges of his personal life. When Iris mentions that Walter used to be her professor; that they later had a drunken fling, and that he quit teaching after unspecified accusations, Walter’s background grows more shadowed. But none of this alters the complex web of affection, grief and sadness that ties together his familial and social circle.

My biggest complaint about this film is its unjustified negative content. There’s brief, blurred shower nudity but more irritating is the inclusion of a dozen unnecessary sexual expletives in the script. This could easily have been a PG-13 movie and as a family movie critic, I can only bemoan the lost opportunity for this touching, empathetic film to have a wider audience. Bing deserves has fifteen minutes of fame.