GOOD GRIEF - Mark Reviews Movies

Good Grief, Netflix

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Review by Mark Dujsik | January 4, 2024

Above all else, this man wants to avoid grief as much as possible. Marc, played by writer/director Daniel Levy, says that a few times over the course of Good Grief, and that partially explains why the movie itself seems to go out of its way to do the same.

The problem, then, is that Levy's screenplay never quite figures out what's supposed to fill the significant gap in this story, since grief itself is apparently off the table for the filmmaker. To be sure, this becomes the story of the friendship between three people, all of whom have gaps of their own to fill and none of whom has a decent understanding of how to do that. It's tough to buy them as actual people, though, because the whole movie establishes a certain distance from its characters and the material as soon as it becomes clear that it isn't particularly interested in exploring the idea that's right there in its title.

At the start (and for the rest of the story), Marc lives a fundamentally comfortable and worry-free life as an infrequent artist. As wholly unlikely as that may seem, that's thanks to the fact he's married to Oliver (Luke Evans), the writer of a series of very successful young-adults novels that are being adapted into the movies. In the opening scene, the couple is hosting a Christmas party at their lavish London apartment, where we also meet their friends Sophie (Ruth Negga), who has commitment issues, and Thomas (Himseh Patel), who dated Marc for less than a year 15 years ago and is beginning to believe that love isn't in the cards for him.

Before the party ends, Oliver is dead. He has to leave early to make it to Paris for a book-signing event, and his cab is involved in a fatal accident within view from the apartment.

The funeral happens (Kaitlyn Dever has an uncomfortably amusing cameo as the self-involved star of the movies based on Oliver's books, and David Bradley plays the late author's father, whose eulogy is the movie's most affecting moment). With Thomas staying in the apartment and support from Sophie, Marc gradually overcomes the shock and depression of losing his husband in a hasty string of scenes. Almost a year later, he decides to open the last Christmas card Oliver gave him, and the contents open a new kind of confusion.

As it turns out, Marc and Oliver had an open marriage, although the former apparently didn't care to exercise that freedom. Oliver, though, met someone who was more to him than one of his agreed-upon flings, and if he had lived, he and Marc would have talked, debated, or argued about that.

Instead, Marc decides to invite Sophie and Thomas for a trip to Paris (He's able to maintain financial security because of Oliver's estate, and Celia Imrie plays an attorney who hints there might be some money issues but, since that would complicate matters too much, really exists to offer some pat words of wisdom in the third act). Pretending his husband's bachelor pad is the couple's home-away-from-home with his friends, Marc tries to reconcile his love for Oliver and the secret life the husband kept from him.

That's the basic idea, at least. In practice, Levy's script amounts to scenes of the trio of pals hanging out at the apartment, Sophie dragging her buddies to a dinner date she has arranged via an app, Marc spending time with a French man (played by Arnaud Valois) he met at a London art show, the three talking around their assorted issues, and the friends finally having a confrontation from a scenic view of the city.

Something feels foundationally off about the whole arrangement of the story, the relationships, the conflict rolling to a boil, and the way this episodic structure just keeps everything in a state of emotional remove. It's understandable that none of these characters wants to address what's actually happening with them—Marc's pain, which is amplified by how he never truly grieved the death of his mother, and Sophie's inability to really connect with a romantic partner and Thomas' growing certainty that he will be alone. It's odd, though, that the whole of this story just goes along with that philosophy, until Levy finally determines that maybe it's time for the three to actually talk—just before the story ends, mind you.

Levy's performance, which comes across as a studied presentation of vulnerability, is a bit limited for his character's internal conflict to remain mostly unspoken. While Negga and Patel fare better, their characters never quite rise above the broad types they're portraying. They feel more like sidekicks than self-contained characters, and that makes Thomas' reaction to discovering Marc's fib about the apartment and Oliver's secondary life feel forced as just a way to introduce some conflict into the mix.

To be fair, Levy's intentions with Good Grief are clearly sincere, and despite the mostly comedic tone, there is an air of melancholy and regret beneath the surface. Mostly, the movie miscalculates what it withholds and how it does so.

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