Better than any virtual character than a team of visual effects of Crack could evoke, the gentle long -sided giant of a dog who gives “the friend” his lasting soul – a large Danish in black with the falling eyes of a clown of the silent era, credited like bing – is also, it turns out, among the best cot co -stars A superlative on the screen As Naomi Watts could have had in his long career in vegetables.
Together, these actors on the screen beautifully mismatched but generous help to raise the light and casual interpretation of David Siegel and Scott McGehee from the national novel of the National Book of Sigrid Nunez 2018 on sorrow at a rarefied emotional place. In the middle of a New York, imposing skylines, animated tracks and cramped apartments, “the friend” strips the kind of company films of the easy attraction of Mawkishness, bringing him closer to what a dialogue in progress looks like between the solitary species in fitting.
Watts, a veteran of interiority on the screen, plays Iris, writer and teacher Stagné, unable to give meaning to the recent suicide of his mentor and best friend Walter, played by Bill Murray in funny opening scenes which give us a chance to miss him too.
A Genial Misanthrope and Serial Womanizer Who Considers it a Personal Point of Pride that after soeping once with iris they remaine, Walter Nevertheless Leaves Behind Many Mourners: Admirers, Colleagues, A Grown Daughter (Sarah Pidgeon) from An Affair, GUGINO, Constance wu) and a Third and Final Wife (Noma Dumezweni), Who Informs Iris that it was walter's wants her to take care of her companion in the size of a pony, Apollo.
The left legs – as if taking care of Walter's inheritance with a book late for his correspondence was not enough – is, in Iris, a mystery above an enigma. She suddenly finds her controlled rent shoe box of an apartment taken up by a destructive roommate of mobile and furniture whose presence can have it expelled, if the reminders without smiling of a otherwise user -friendly building (Felix Solis) are an indication.
But in her attempt exhausted by the nerves to cover Apollo while seeing his needs, Iris is forced to count with what more than more solemnity books: an incarnation of Walter, of course, but also a creature just as mourning, blocked and lost that it is. Do we pushing this?
Fans of the discursive but fluid novel of Nunez will probably miss the cliché of his critical observations on literary mentalities and so on. The films have trouble capturing what is shaggy and bitter about writers without falling into the trap of the liners. But while the stuff from the world of authors fall into a sort of bland narrative dressing – even with the solid contributions of the support distribution – Siegel and McGehee know that the heart of their film is in what Iris and Apollo create. They are a strange couple feeling mutually in a way to return to life.
This is where the persistent attraction of Watts mastery with sorrow arrives, its skills as guaranteed in solo mode as against others (including, yes, the CGI gargantuan monkey of “King Kong”). But with Bing, which filmmakers treat as a real co-star worthy of close-ups, contemplation and behavior of authentic dogs, Watts finds another rich emotion to dramatize with delicacy, humor and intelligent vulnerability. Its iris allows us to see why, in our darkest times, the poles of loneliness and forced unit can be so unsatisfactory, but the good type of solitude can be the fabric of real healing.
'The friend'
Class: R, for the language including a sexual reference
Operating time: 2 hours
Playing: In broad publication Friday April 4
