‘See You When I See You’ Review: Jay Duplass’s Overly Careful Tale of Family Grief Remains at Arm’s Length [C+] | Sundance

Jay Duplass’s latest feature, See You When I See You, feels light-years removed from the shaggy, conversational looseness that once defined Mumblecore. Where Duplass’s early work trafficked in halting speech, improvisatory intimacy, and the ache of small decisions, this film is somber, restrained, and conspicuously well-behaved: a sincere, if largely generic, account of a family coping with sudden and devastating loss. Adapted by Adam Cayton-Holland from his own memoir, Tragedy Plus Time: A Tragic-comic Memoir, the film announces itself at the outset as a true story, only to hedge that claim in a disclaimer buried at the end of the credits—an equivocation that feels emblematic of the movie’s larger uncertainty about how boldly it wants to assert itself.

Cooper Raiff stars as Aaron, presumably Cayton-Holland’s stand-in, a stand-up comedian whose life stalls following the suicide of his sister and best friend, Leah (Kaitlyn Dever). Aaron is creatively blocked, emotionally inert, and prone to intrusive fantasies in which Leah briefly reappears, only to be swept away by a tornado—a literalization of grief’s suddenness that the film returns to often, though without much variation. He refuses repeated entreaties to see a therapist, insisting, in a way that suggests both pride and panic, that he will manage on his own. After ghosting his girlfriend, Camila (Ariela Barer), for two months, Aaron resurfaces hoping to resume the relationship, only to discover that she has already moved on. What follows—a series of uninvited encounters—is behavior the film takes care to identify as unhealthy, even as it struggles to dramatize its emotional roots with any real specificity.

The narrative’s central dispute concerns whether to hold a funeral for Leah. The father, Robert (David Duchovny), and the older sister, Emily (Lucy Boynton)—lawyers who practice together and approach grief with professionalized composure—favor tradition and closure. The mother, Page (Hope Davis), and Aaron would rather avoid the ritual altogether. Complicating matters further, Page is quietly grappling with a serious medical diagnosis, one she conceals from the rest of the family while avoiding treatment. The accumulation of crises is formidable, bordering on schematic, yet it reflects a recognizable truth: catastrophe rarely arrives alone, and grief has a way of reorganizing a family’s hierarchy of urgency.

As you can see, it’s a lot. The film’s virtue is its recognition that each family member is grieving differently and largely in isolation, offering support that is well-intentioned but mistimed or misdirected. The material could easily devolve into the sort of melodrama that plays endlessly on cable television, but See You When I See You distinguishes itself, if modestly, through its earnestness—particularly in its refusal to romanticize Aaron’s self-absorption or excuse his treatment of Camila as a byproduct of pain.

Raiff, an appealing presence in his own directorial work, is asked here to toggle between two modes: the affable, joking version of Aaron in flashbacks and the withdrawn, despondent figure the comedian has become. Though the film suggests that Aaron is suffering from post-traumatic stress, the characterization remains blunt. His interior life is often reduced to a few emblematic behaviors, most puzzlingly his fixation on watching sage grouses—a detail introduced with some insistence but never fully integrated into the film’s emotional logic. It feels like a metaphor in search of an argument.

Jay Deuby’s nimble editing does much of the heavy lifting, helping viewers navigate the film’s shifting timelines and mental states. The therapy sessions, featuring Gabrielle Byndloss as a perceptive and unflashy clinician, are among the film’s strongest sequences—clear-eyed, humane, and refreshingly free of platitudes. Duplass’s direction is competent and unobtrusive, demonstrating an ease with visual effects and narrative complexity that his early work rarely required. Yet competence is also the film’s ceiling. For all its sensitivity, See You When I See You rarely surprises.

One suspects that Duplass’s deference to Cayton-Holland’s personal material may be part of the problem. The qualities that once defined his filmmaking—its intimacy, its spontaneity, its tolerance for awkwardness—are largely absent here, replaced by a carefulness that flattens the film’s emotional contours. See You When I See You is not without feeling, but it is reluctant to linger in messiness, to let scenes run long enough to discover something unplanned. In a story about grief’s refusal to resolve neatly, that restraint feels less like maturity than a missed opportunity.

Grade: C+

This review is from the 2026 Sundance Film Festival where See You When I See You had its world premiere.