Good Grief: Getting to the Point that “Somehow Life Goes On”

Marc (Daniel Levy) was content living in the shadow of his larger-than-life husband, Oliver (Luke Evans). But when Oliver unexpectedly dies, Marc’s world shatters, sending him and his two best friends, Sophie (Ruth Negga) and Thomas (Himesh Patel), on a soul-searching trip to Paris that reveals some hard truths they each needed to face.

Review:

Good Grief is a romantic dramedy about loving and forgiving yourself and the indiscretions of others, particularly dead lovers/husbands-wives. It’s more about coming to grips with grief’s knowledge and compromised memories so one can live soberly and fully with the dance between death and life. There isn’t a lot of drama between friends here, just fumbling with each other’s mistakes, self and group analyzing them and than constructing compromises that work for everyone.

Daniel Levy, son of director Eugene, is not only adapting his father’s comic style but deepening it with little poetic observations that come off as earned wisdom. Grief has the ability to disabuse even the most self-absorbed of their most strongly held ideals. The three friends must come to grips with the fact that their admired best friend had secrets, hidden sides, was thoroughly human, and probably in the midrange (like everyone) of admirable humanity. This awareness is what gives Good Grief its authenticity.

They’re all creative types. The widower, Marc (Daniel Levy) is a painter. His now dead husband, Oliver (Luke Evan’s) wrote teen lit. Their straight female friend, Sophie (Ruth Negga) is a film costume designer. Thomas (Himesh Patel) works at an art gallery. Each have long simmering hurts that come to a head and are exposed when they spend a weekend together in Oliver’s secret tryst apartment in Paris.

The Paris setting is a little too pat metaphorically but perfect for a film about living and resolving devastating emotional reveals. Marc being financially well off streamlines the drama. There is no dire financial stuff, other than taxes, that can get in the way.

These artsy folks only need to focus on their existential and emotional issues and questions. When you’ve entwined your life with someone else’s, what happens when they’re gone? When love evaporates without warning, how can you keep living? Each process grief differently and come to their own compromise on how to live through it.

Levy’s script and direction deftly handles the grief complexities that arise. It trusts the audience to pay attention. That restraint makes Good Grief an odd film by Hollywood genre standards. It simply won’t take the easy way out by adding cheap surprise twists.

It’s often talky in a good way. These friends are dealing with the pain, loss, regrets directly and honestly and often in a nonjudgmental way. They know how to argue and compromise and ultimately change for the better and wiser. The cast generates the right emotions without turning Good Grief into a treacly pity party. Resolution is not the point. To keep on loving and finding new life is.