THE FRIEND

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Storyline (warning: spoilers)

In The Friend, Naomi Watts’ canine co-star, Apollo, looks as if he’s descended direct from Olympus. He’s an extraordinarily poised Great Dane who Watts’ Iris, a writer and teacher, has inherited from Walter, her literary mentor and best friend. Walter died by suicide for unknown reasons, and Iris and Apollo are both grieving. There is another problem, however. Iris is finding it impossible to contain the dog, a commanding presence, in her tiny, rent-controlled flat.
The film is an adaptation of a novel by New Yorker Sigrid Nunez which was both a meditation on the way the narrator and the Dane bond over their memories and a trenchant comment on the writing and teaching life. The narrative is slow-going, but the mood is nostalgic and pleasingly melancholy, and Walter appears in enough flashbacks to give you an insight into what he and Iris saw in one another. In this age of podcasts, sound bites and short reads, it’s refreshing to find yourself among people who have spent their lives dedicated to the written word.
The group also has a caustically witty fondness for gossip, and Iris finds a kindred spirit when she re-connects with Walter’s first wife, Elaine. They share tart opinions of Walter’s other two wives – Elaine’s successor, Tuesday, who routinely irritates everybody they know, and number three, Barbara, the official widow. She’s the one who virtually orders Iris to take Apollo on. Summoning her to the Brooklyn brownstone she had shared with Walter, she tells Iris that Apollo is wasting away from grief and will die if he stays where he is. She also makes him sound more biddable than he really is. When Iris gets him home, he colonises her bed and refuses to shift, forcing her to sleep on the floor.
As for Apollo, he’s a study in minimalist acting. Iris discovers that his only pleasure lies in being read to. Walter, it seems, used to read selected passages from his works in progress. It’s an extremely understated film, the only action is focused on the incremental changes taking place between Apollo and Iris as they gradually come together in their mutual distress.