‘The Friend’ Review: Naomi Watts and a Very Good Boy Named Bing Make for a Deeply Dignified Dog Story | Telluride

You don’t ever own your dog, not really. When you bring one into your life, you simply become their human, their companion, and protector, the same way they become your dependable mate, your dog, your family. But because society is often overeager to reduce the bonds of a dog and a human down to the inadequate parameters of ownership, many dog-centric movies have been guilty of internalizing this misconception, too. There couldn’t be higher praise for The Friend, Scott McGehee and David Siegel’s gentle, classically earnest and infinitely big-hearted New York tearjerker, than recognizing it for being an openhanded and truly one-of-a-kind exception among all the other stories that spread this fallacy.

A beautiful tale of friendship, grief, trust and community centered on a New York writer and the majestic Great Dane she involuntarily (at first at least) gets stuck with, The Friend gradually proves just how wise it is through the generous windows it opens into the several unique companionships it portrays, including and especially the one between the aforesaid author and her stunning 151-lbs pal with the biggest noggin. In that, this humorous and deceptively small flick (adapted from a Sigrid Nunez novel) is for everyone who has imaginary (but very real) conversations with their pet. Everyone who pre-grieved the unavoidable loss of one. Everyone who prefers the comforting drools, smells, and cuddles of a doggo to the cruelty of the outside world. Not to sound like a cliché, but you might want to bring a box of tissues to this one. Heck, bring two.

While We’re Young” and Luce excepted, Naomi Watts hasn’t really found a role in the past decade that is worthy of her peerless expressiveness, a quality that masterworks such as Mulholland Drive and King Kong were deeply anchored in. But as Iris—that initially begrudging custodian, as well as an author and teacher—she gently but hauntingly reminds us why she is one of the greats who can infuse layers and layers of meaning into even the quietest moments. Her Iris is one of those scholarly New Yorkers. She teaches a creative writing class by day and works on her book while suffering a terrible case of writer’s block by night (the irony that her book is titled Eastern Bloc doesn’t escape her), while living in her charming but small downtown apartment decorated tastefully with wall-to-wall books. (Truly, her apartment is a lovely production design achievement.) When Iris’s famed writer friend and confidante Walter (Bill Murray) suddenly dies by suicide, his third wife Barbara (Noma Dumezweni) invites Iris over to discuss something, which jumpstarts a chain of events involving Walter’s friends, previous ex-wives (Carla Gugino as Elaine, and Constance Wu as Tuesday), Walter’s daughter and Iris’s writing partner Val (Sarah Pidgeon of Stereophonic) and other side players that collectively form a vintage New York tale. One charged by connections made, broken, missed and newly formed.

That discussion topic is Apollo, by the way—a breathtaking Harlequin Great Dane named Bing, an excellent actor and obviously a very good boy. He is Walter’s beloved doggie that a very matter-of-fact Barbara (a self-professed not a dog person) has put in a kennel until finding a more permanent solution. Her pitch to Iris (another cat person) to take him in is heartrending: The poor and sad Apollo is inconsolable. He won’t eat. He won’t drink. He can’t stay in the same home where Walter once was, as he clings onto his memory like that Hachi dog. And he is very well trained—so much so that under no circumstances would he climb up on the bed. (If you believe that, chances are, you’ve never met a dog.)

But how could Iris possibly have him as a roomie in her tiny 500 sq ft apartment and building that doesn’t accept dogs, as its friendly super Hektor (an absolutely wonderful Felis Solis) often reminds her? As Iris desperately tries to make a new and lasting arrangement for Apollo while keeping him “temporarily,” souls unspool, grief runs its course through thoughtful flashbacks (featuring a small but unforgettable part for Murray), and hearts change and grow fonder, both inside of humans and canines.

One doesn’t have to be a psychic to foresee that Iris would eventually fall in love with Apollo and decide to keep him. But that resolution is not the point of The Friend anyway, as this sophisticated little treat is more interested in the motions and emotions of the journey than the inevitability of its conclusion. This temperament will be recognizable to those familiar with McGehee and Siegel’s oeuvre—from the intimate noir The Deep End to the old-fashioned Montana Story, films that take the familiar, and turn them into something fiercely original and feminine. In that, we follow the sad but resilient boy Apollo for a while. A conduit of Walter at first, he is the sole recipient of Iris’s frequent inner dialogues, struggling to make sense of the death of a friend who might have been something more to her once upon a time. But in due course, Iris finally meets Apollo on his own level, realizing (thanks to a very wise vet) that he has his stages of grief too. After all the beautifully written build-up between the two, it’s simply well-earned magic to witness Iris  to rise to the occasion, allowing herself and Apollo to become each other’s emotional support against the urban life’s curveballs…

The Friend would still melt the coldest of hearts had its rewards stopped at introducing us to Bing, and giving us a fabulously humorous nod to Midnight Cowboy, with the big tall guy and Watts walking through the city crowd. But its classical and kind vision of New York—a city of grand interiors, red brick buildings, brownstones, the joyous Central Park and numerous serene enclaves—is also something of a nostalgic and perfectly visualized miracle, unexpectedly soothing and cozy across a town melancholically gearing up for the sad yet colorful holiday season. (In that sense, the duo’s New York is very close to Billy Wilder’s in The Apartment.) But The Friend’s deepest win is still how acutely it understands the hearts of dog people, perhaps as well as Laure Anderson’s wonderful Heart of a Dog as the most dignified dog movie since that understated non-fiction gem. In the end, Iris grows into one of those dog people too, yearning nothing more than giving Apollo a good life all the way through his inevitable decline and notoriously short life span. In a way, The Friend just wants to inspire you about the possibility of such a selfless form of love. And it is all the more stirring a gift for it.

Grade: A

This review is from the 2024 Telluride Film Festival. The Friend currently does not have U.S. distribution.