The Friend review – Naomi Watts befriends great dane in sweet, slight drama

New York film festival: an adaptation of Sigrid Nunez’s bestselling 2018 novel about a woman dealing with her friend’s suicide is tender and well-acted, if a little messy It takes a certain type of person to have a dog in New York City, let alone a 180lb, questionably behaved one. Iris, played with a natural grace by Naomi Watts in The Friend, is not that type of person. She is a mostly solitary writer in a small – at least, to the eyes of her more accomplished peers – apartment in the West Village, whose schedule is at the whims of her teaching work and sputtering attempts at a novel. She has settled into an independent rhythm of middle-aged singledom in the city. Also, she prefers cats. Nevertheless, she finds herself caring for Apollo, her late best friend Walter’s (Bill Murray) beloved great dane, after his suicide. The Friend, a slight and tender-hearted adaptation of Sigrid Nunez’s bestselling 2018 novel, opens with the scene of an abandoned Apollo’s fateful meeting with Walter in Brooklyn Bridge Park. It’s love at first sight, a story he evidently relishes at a dinner party that suggests a rich (in all the ways) life of books, hearty wine and writerly community. The two-hour film, written and directed by Scott McGehee and David Siegel, summarily jumps to the present, where Iris finds herself as a reluctant node within a thorny network of women grieving Walter’s death – one current wife (Noma Dumezweni) and two former (Constance Wu and Carla Gugino), as well as a recently un-estranged adult daughter named Val (Sarah Pidgeon), with whom Iris is compiling a book of Walter’s correspondence. The Friend is screening at the New York film festival and will be released at a later date