City Cinema: The Friend

Drama.
14A.
Dir: Scott McGeHee/David Siegel.
US, 119 min.
Bill Murray, Naomi Watts.

“Iris is being pulled too many ways. One of her writing students is coyly semi-threatening to show her his erotic fiction. A current project is steadfastly refusing to take wing. Her best friend and mentor, a beguiling verbal magician named Walter, has just taken his own life, leaving behind what seems a platoon of ex-wives and lovers. And also leaving behind a dog, which for reasons Iris can’t quite fathom, he has bequeathed to her. Apollo, who’s played by the superb canine performer Bing, seems an unlikely hero at first. The Great Dane has sadder-than-sad eyes complemented by frowning jowls… As Iris seeks to find a suitable place or person on which to offload the dog, she increasingly finds herself not wanting to. She has plenty of human friends, but you know how people in the writing world are. What Apollo offers Iris is unconditional. She seems never to have experienced that before, and she comes to value it. How could she not?

..Both emotionally raw and acutely thoughtful, rife with specificity. It’s career-high stuff.” —Glenn Kenny, Roger Ebert.com