“What will happen to the dog?”<\/p>\n
Fast facts about The Friend<\/p>\n
What: A lightly comedic drama about a woman who inherits a great dane she really does not want.<\/p>\n
Starring: Naomi Watts, Bill Murray and Bing the great dane.<\/p>\n
Directed by: Scott McGehee and David Siegel<\/p>\n
Where: In cinemas from July 31.<\/p>\n
Likely to make you feel: Like we do not deserve dogs.<\/p>\n
There are many questions left in the wake of the suicide of famous New York writer Walter (Bill Murray), but this is the most pressing one in The Friend, an adaptation of Sigrid Nunez’s 2018 bestseller.<\/p>\n
It is the one Walter’s best friend and literary mentee, Iris (Naomi Watts), is forced to grapple with after his current wife (Noma Dumezweni), two ex-wives (Carla Gugino and Constance Wu) and his adult daughter, Val (Sarah Pidgeon), refuse to adopt his beloved dog, Apollo.<\/p>\n
Iris is not allowed pets at her cosy rent-controlled Greenwich Village apartment. She is also more of a cat person. And she has been trying, and failing, to make progress on the book she is compiling of Walter’s correspondence as it is.<\/p>\n
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Murray (right) mostly appears in flashbacks throughout The Friend. (Supplied: Bleecker Street)<\/p>\n
After Walter’s death, Apollo begins avoiding food, instead waiting by the door for the return of an owner who will never materialise. That is, until Walter’s widow ships him off to a dog kennel.<\/p>\n
Iris has been similarly adrift, suffering from writer’s block, feeling invisible, and unsure about her place in grieving Walter as someone who was never his girlfriend or wife.<\/p>\n
Also, Apollo is not just any dog \u2014 he is a 70-odd-kilogram harlequin great dane.<\/p>\n
And yet, Iris struggles with the thought of Apollo going to anyone but her. Not because Walter wanted her to have him, but because Apollo seems incapable of processing his loss.<\/p>\n
Uncomfortable with the idea of abandoning her friend’s devoted dog to an underfunded rescue, Iris keeps Apollo, at first begrudgingly, under the guise of helping him heal.<\/p>\n
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To begin with, Apollo does not listen to any of Iris’s commands, tears apart her flat when she leaves him alone, and growls when she tries to sleep in her bed. (Supplied: Bleecker Street)<\/p>\n
Really, it is the beginning of her healing journey, and of the love story that drives this 2-hour film, written and directed by Scott McGehee and David Siegel.<\/p>\n
Iris thinks she is the “emotional support human and it’s the dog that can’t cope”. In reality, Apollo’s looming, ostentatious presence provides essential emotional support that helps reinvigorate her stagnant life \u2014 creative and otherwise \u2014 which revolved around Walter’s for too many years.<\/p>\n
It is through their growing and unexpected bond that she is also able to reconsider her late friend and the questions she has about his decision to kill himself, among others.<\/p>\n
Then, just as Iris is on the cusp of realising she loves Apollo, her landlord threatens her with eviction because of him.<\/p>\n
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There are many questions for Iris to sort through following Walter’s death, from what their relationship meant, to why he did not have a plan for his adoring dog. (Supplied: Bleecker Street)<\/p>\n
The Friend does not offer any answers as to what to do about lovable, if deeply problematic, men like Walter, and it spends too much time depicting Manhattan and its achingly intellectual literary scene, perhaps in an attempt to be remembered as one of the great stories set in New York.<\/p>\n
But it goes to great lengths to consider the impact suicide has on the people left behind, and beautifully articulates the hopelessness of grief, particularly when it comes to mourning complicated figures and the messy relationships that often come with such types.<\/p>\n
Austin returns for season 2<\/a><\/p>\n Tune in this Sunday at 7.30pm on ABC TV or on ABC iview.<\/p>\n Watts is the perfect blank canvas for the meek and fragile, yet deeply angry, Iris.<\/p>\n