Good Grief review: Dan Levy's directorial debut is a dull and disappointing look at what it means to grieve

A lot of anticipation came with Good Grief, the feature-length directorial debut from Schitt's Creek actor and showrunner Dan Levy. Unfortunately it is pretty uninspired and all over the place: filled with teary-eyed earnestness that rubs on you for a little too long. Earnest in its approach to study the impact of loss and mourning, of moving on to accept new things that life has to offer us, Good Grief loses depth early on and never catches hold again. (Also read: Golden Globes 2024: Michelle Yeoh, Angela Bassett, Amanda Seyfried among first batch of presenters)

Grief in terms of muscle memory

One of the first (of many) meditations on loss arrives when Levy's Marc says: "I've been reading that the brain is like a muscle. That's why getting over a death is so hard: because your brain has been trained to feel things for a person. And when they go away, your head is still operating under the impression that it should feel more things. Like.... muscle memory." Get it? Yes, yes that's the kind of reflection on grief that this project aims at. Good grief, indeed!

The premise

It opens with a Christmas party, where we are introduced to Marc, a London-based artist, and his husband Oliver (Luke Evans). Oliver is the writer of a best-selling series of fantasy novels that has been turned into a hit movie franchise. We also meet Marc’s two best friends, Sophie (Oscar nominee Ruth Negga) and Thomas (Himesh Patel). The atmosphere swells to the tune of William Bell’s Everyday Will Be Like a Holiday. A bare minute later, Oliver meets a fatal accident on the road.

From here, Good Grief takes some tidying up, and the timeline shifts to a year later when Marc asks Sophie and Thomas to accompany him on a trip to Paris. What he hides from them is that Oliver had admitted to an affair on the same Christmas card 12 months ago, and wanted to talk about it. He also comes to know of Marc’s Parisian apartment and the lover he was supposed to meet.

Final thoughts

Despite best intentions, Good Grief feels dull and laboured. Levy is natural performer but there's no hiding the self-congratulatory tactics of the screenplay that doesn't allow any space for intrigue or emotional heft. The worst of it rubs off on the supporting roles- especially the gifted Ruth Negga who gets a thankless role of an alcoholic girlfriend who cannot get themselves together. Teamed with Himesh Patel, these two friends act merely as exercises of sinking in with Marc and his melancholy. By the time a heated argument sets the Ferris wheel at Place de la Concorde in motion, the interest is already lost. A cameo from Emma Corrin leads nowhere. Good Grief really has nothing to add or say to what already exists. With its gaze bent on gliding through irregular exteriors, this is a film that is in dire need of urgency, intensity and space.

I was reminded of Krzysztof Kieślowski's Three Colours: Blue, which dealt with a similar trajectory of dealing with betrayal laced with grief- but in a vastly different style. It released three decades ago, but the enigma and quietness of it still sticks. This reminder doesn't bode well with the one-note cover of Levy's Good Grief, which wants to suggest the depths of rumination and introspection but with scenes where the characters can at best raise a glass “to the f**king pain!” It comes off not as poignant or funny, but just an embarrassment.

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