Charlie Brown’s favourite exclamation is appropriated by Dan Levy, best known as the hilariously spoiled eldest son of the Rose family in Schitt’s Creek, for his likeable directorial debut. The Canadian actor turned writer-director springboards from an audacious premise: a comedy based on mourning.
Marc Dreyfus (a double-jobbing Levy) has friends and an apparently devoted partner in Oliver (Luke Evans) when, following a lively Christmas party, Oliver dies. A year later Marc asks his two best friends — his former lover Thomas (Himesh Patel) and party girl Sophie (Ruth Negga) — to accompany him on a blow-out trip to Paris. The excursion turns into something like a detective story.
They are journeying to Oliver’s secret apartment in the French capital. “This is where people come to do sex,” Sophie trills as she surveys the superswanky residence; “Marc probably doesn’t need to be reminded of all the sex they had here,” Thomas adds, unhelpfully. After he happens upon a gift to the “other man”, Marc heads to a Loewe store to ask for details and a credit note.
Soon enough, the intended recipient of the gift eventually turns his key in the door. It’s not all doom and gloom. In Paris, Marc meets the handsome and empathetic Theo (120 BPM’s Arnaud Valois). But is he ready for another romance?
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A touristy vision of the French capital, shot by the cinematographer Ole Bratt Birkeland, makes this a perfect fit for Netflix’s popular line in Paris porn. Levy’s nuanced attempts to navigate grief as revelations about the open marriage he never wanted emerge to make for an appealing theme.
It doesn’t quite work. Actors as talented as Negga and Patel can’t enliven the “zany” auxiliary friend roles. Levy’s script, more damningly, can’t quite reconcile grief with the film’s romcom ambitions. A promising first film, nonetheless.
Good Grief is on Netflix from Friday, January 5th
