Naomi Watts gives a poignantly paw-sitive take on grief in 'The Friend' (2024)

Never work with children or animals. So goes the oft-quoted W.C. Fields idiom.

But The Friend, now making its world premiere at the Telluride Film Festival, is a lively argument for why animals, particularly dogs, might just make the best scene partners.

Based on the 2018 Sigrid Nunez novel of the same name, The Friend follows Iris (Naomi Watts), a writer grieving the loss of her best friend and mentor, Walter (Bill Murray). But Iris doesn't only have to face the weight of her grief. She must also contend with the fact that Walter seemingly indicated his wish for Iris — not his third wife, Barbara (Noma Dumezweni) — to adopt his dog: Apollo the Great Dane. Never mind that Iris is a cat person and that her rent-controlled NYC apartment does not allow pets.

Ostensibly, The Friend is about a woman who is ill-equipped to care for a dog, especially one as large as a Great Dane, but who attempts to honor her friend's last wishes, mostly to comedic effect. But the film is really a meditation on grief and the ways it seeps into our bodies and souls until it touches every nerve ending. How loss is not merely a human experience, but one that all creatures face.

Apollo becomes a conduit for Iris's grief. Walter died by suicide, and Iris channels much of her confusion and anger into the less-than-ideal situation of caring for the dog. But what's more, she connects with and understands Apollo's pain, gradually understanding that they share a mutual sense of abandonment.

It must be said that Bing, the Great Dane who plays Apollo, is the film's true star. His soulful eyes and mournful howls are truly heartbreaking, while his hangdog refusal to use an elevator or give up his spot on Iris's bed is familiar and funny. In much the same way that Snoop from Anatomy of a Fall was the biggest celebrity at any awards gathering last year, Bing is likely to be the most popular attendee throughout awards season.

But while Bing is masterful, his real magic is in the miraculous work he elicits from his screen partners. Watts gives one of her best performances ever as Iris, a woman wrestling with loss and her tangled relationship with Walter that wades into ever muddier waters as the film progresses. Watts is penetrating in the ways she depicts Iris's deep grief, never breaking down but conveying it in the smallest of choices — like pausing in shock upon the discovery of Walter's eyeglasses sitting where he last left them or the mournful way she smells a T-shirt that belonged to him.

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A dog is not an actor; it is just a creature existing on screen. As such, an actor can either choose to try to compete with that or they can give themselves over to the radical honesty of their scene partner. Watts opts for the latter, which in turn elicits a subtle vulnerability in her work that makes her performance powerfully affecting. She never allows her grief to consume her, never permits Apollo to completely overwhelm her, but instead exists in a perpetual state of teetering on the edge of emotional incontinence.

She is surrounded by a solid supporting cast, notably in Murray's wry turn as a man who is both a paternal figure and a lost love. Murray grants Walter a wink of his innate silliness, which makes the man's selfish melancholy all the more painful. Carla Gugino and Constance Wu join Dumezweni as Walter's wives, with Gugino exuding a wounded warmth and Wu tapping into a high-strung bitchiness.

Perhaps the best of the bunch, however, is Sarah Pidgeon, a rising star thanks to her Tony-nominated performance in Stereophonic. Pidgeon plays Walter's daughter, Val, who is working with Iris to complete a collected book of her father's correspondence. But Val is also Iris's gut check; the two women lean on each other in their strange, heartbreaking situation. Pidgeon proves that her keen understanding of emotional wounds is not limited to the stage.

Scott McGehee and David Siegel, who co-wrote and co-directed the film, don't bring anything particularly groundbreaking to the film's visual style (nor does it call for such an approach). But their writing is their true triumph, as they turn Nunez's exceedingly internal novel into a far more external poetic meditation.

The film makes frequent use of voiceover, perhaps leaning on it too much, but it's a reasonable approach to dealing with the novel's use of first-person narration. More importantly, The Friend uses its narration and Iris's conversations with Apollo and others to deliver philosophical musings that have the power to stop one in their tracks.

"How can you explain death to a dog?" Barbara asks Iris. It's a question Iris ponders throughout the film until she comes to understand that Apollo is mourning as keenly as she is — if not more so. As she so beautifully puts it, "I'm the emotional support human and the dog is the one who can't cope." (Albeit she's lying to herself, but that's neither here nor there.)

The Friend is a love story, one between a woman and the dog she never expected to own. It gracefully captures the remarkable, singular relationship that human beings share with their pets, tapping into the poignancy and warmth that comes from such a bond. Apollo is felled by grief, just as Iris is, and the film chronicles that in touching detail. But it also celebrates and embraces the mutual comfort there, the way that both Iris and Apollo are granted a new leash on life.

Some will say The Friend is sentimental, and it is. In all the ways it should be. It unabashedly wears its heart on its sleeve, paying homage to our furry friends while probing deeper themes about bereavement. It's a touching reminder that when life is ruff, sometimes you just need a dog. Grade: B+