Good Grief Is a Heartfelt, Sometimes Laborious Exploration of Life After Loss
In the first scene of Good Grief, Daniel Levy’s directorial film debut, Marc (Levy) suffers an insurmountable loss. His doting husband Oliver (Luke Evans) is killed in a car crash, and life as he knows it instantly stops cold. It’s a crushing beginning to a film that more or less maintains that level of solemnity for its 100-minute runtime, and those expecting Levy to bring his usual Schitt’s Creek levity to the table—even for brief interludes of comic relief—may be disappointed. Good Grief is not a dramedy (even though it is marketed as one), but rather a somber film about the messiness of grief and its often unforgiving, even destructive, grip.
Good Grief takes a number of unexpected turns along the way, one being a quick transformation from a story about a man grieving the loss of his partner into a story about friendship. Marc has two best friends, Sophie (Ruth Negga) and Thomas (Himesh Patel), both of whom do their best to carry him through his first year of grief. Their relationship yields an unexpected and powerful perspective on loss, and writer/director Levy does a nuanced job at showing how those close to you can help you through your darkest hour—but how you might unintentionally hurt them in the process.
Throughout Good Grief, Levy hones in on the discomfort of Marc’s grief. He feels the pressure to download dating apps. He’s forced to navigate others’ unease around the subject of Oliver. He must traverse feelings of anger toward his late partner. While, for the most part, it rings as refreshingly honest, the heaviness of it all sometimes becomes a little tiresome.
Indeed, Levy often struggles to let Good Grief breathe. Despite entrusting more than competent actors, himself included, to handle this heavy subject matter, he doesn’t quite seem to trust his film enough to lean into much-needed subtlety. His script is filled with on-the-nose monologues about grief and friendship and humanity. It’s hard not to feel hit over the head with these themes at times; we know what the characters are going through—must they tell us repeatedly?