Naomi Watts digs deep into the vulnerability of a loner with ‘The Friend'
Better than any virtual character a crack visual effects team could conjure, the long-faced gentle giant of a dog that gives 'The Friend' its abiding soulfulness — a black-splotched Great Dane with the drooping eyes of a silent-era clown, credited as Bing — is also, it turns out, among the best co-stars a superlative onscreen sufferer like Naomi Watts could have in her long, storied career.
Together, these beautifully mismatched but generous screen sharers help lift David Siegel and Scott McGehee's mild, casually elegant interpretation of Sigrid Nunez's National Book Award-winning 2018 novel about grief to a rarefied emotional place. Amid a handsomely shot New York of towering skylines, busy thoroughfares and cramped apartments, 'The Friend' strips the pet-movie genre from the easy appeal of mawkishness, bringing it closer to what an ongoing dialogue between lonely species stumbling into connection actually feels like.
Watts, a veteran of onscreen interiority, plays Iris, a stagnated writer and professor unable to make sense of the recent suicide of her mentor and best friend Walter, played by Bill Murray in some dryly funny opening scenes that in effect give us a chance to miss him too.
A genial misanthrope and serial womanizer who considers it a personal point of pride that after sleeping once with Iris they remained close, Walter nevertheless leaves behind many mourners: admirers, colleagues, a grown daughter (Sarah Pidgeon) from an affair, a couple of exes (Carla Gugino, Constance Wu) and a third and final wife (Noma Dumezweni), who informs Iris that it was Walter's wish that she take care of his pony-size companion, Apollo.
The left-field bequest — as if tending to Walter's legacy with an overdue book of his correspondence wasn't enough — is, to Iris, a mystery on top of a conundrum. She suddenly finds her rent-controlled shoebox of an apartment taken over by a bed-hogging, furniture-destroying roommate whose very presence might get her evicted, if the unsmiling reminders from an otherwise friendly building super (Felix Solis) are any indication.
But in her nerve-racked attempt to re-home Apollo while seeing to his needs, Iris is forced to reckon with what this 100-plus pounds of solemnity really is: an embodiment of Walter, sure, but also a creature just as grieving, blocked and lost as she is. Does one just push that away?
Fans of Nunez's tartly discursive yet flowing novel will likely miss the snap of its critical observations on literary mind-sets and whatnot. Movies struggle to capture what's shaggy and bitter about writers without falling into the trap of one-liners. But while the author-world stuff falls into a kind of bland narrative dressing — even with the sturdy contributions of the supporting cast — Siegel and McGehee know the heart of their movie is in what Iris and Apollo create. They're an odd couple feeling each other out for a way back into life.
Which is where the evergreen allure of Watts' mastery with sorrow comes in, her skills just as assured when in solo mode as when against others (including, yes, the gargantuan CGI ape of 'King Kong'). But with Bing, whom the filmmakers treat as a genuine co-star worthy of close-ups, contemplation and authentic dog behavior, Watts finds another rich vein of emotion to dramatize with delicacy, humor and intelligent vulnerability. Her Iris lets us see why, in our darkest times, the poles of forced solitude and togetherness can feel so unsatisfying, yet the right kind of aloneness can be the stuff of real healing.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
San Francisco Chronicle
36 minutes ago
- San Francisco Chronicle
‘We had our own Lauryn Hill': Raphael Saadiq goes off about Lucy Pearl bandmate Dawn Robinson at Oakland show
Raphael Saadiq did not hold back during the final night of his 'No Bandwidth: One Man, One Night, Three Decades of Hits' tour, which concluded in his hometown of Oakland. The special one-man show, which kicked off on May 31 at the historic Apollo Theater in New York before subsequent stops in Washington, D.C. and Los Angeles, wrapped up with two consecutive performances at the Fox Theater over the weekend that were as revealing as the crowds were rowdy. The format was reminiscent of 2020's 'Beastie Boys Story' on Apple TV+, though even more sparse and not as technically tight (certain sound and video cues didn't quite sync up). Saadiq on a sparse stage featuring a couple of stools, two guitars, a bass, a turntable and a piano as he shared personal stories about the triumphs and tragedies of his life growing up as a scrawny boy in East Oakland to becoming the co-founder of the 1990s hitmakers Tony! Toni! Toné! and a Grammy-winning producer. Fans were instructed to seal their electronic devices in Yondr pouches when they arrived at the venue, allowing Saadiq to speak openly without fear of a video of him and his comments going viral. As a reward, he gave the crowd an unfiltered account of the fallout that ended Lucy Pearl, the supergroup he formed with Ali Shaheed Muhammad of A Tribe Called Quest and Dawn Robinson, of the Oakland-founded R&B troupe En Vogue. 'Since this is my last show, I'm going to tell y'all,' he said, with a laugh. 'This is why you don't have your phones.' He specifically addressed longstanding tensions with Robinson, whom he called 'our own Lauryn Hill,' referring to the Grammy-winning 'Ex-Factor' singer notorious for being late to her own concerts and the one blamed for canceled reunion tours with the popular '90s hip-hop trio known as the Fugees. 'Actually, I'd rather have Lauryn,' Saadiq said to audible gasps. And he didn't stop there. Reflecting on Lucy Pearl's abrupt dissolution in late 2001, just about two years the group formed, Saadiq recalled a tour stop in Amsterdam — their last — where he learned Robinson wanted to leave the band. 'I couldn't believe it. We did an album in six months, but toured for less than a month,' he said, referring to their self-titled debut that had dropped just a year before. At one point, Saadiq started singing the hook from the Lucy Pearl hit 'Dance Tonight,' which was sung by Robinson. 'See! I didn't need her. I could've sang it myself,' he quipped. To end the segment about what he called his 'Lucifer's Pearl' era, he dismissed recent reports of Robinson living in her car, saying bluntly, 'That sh— about her living in her car is not real.' This rare openness added gravity to a night that was as chaotic as it was thrillingly insightful. Fans showered Saadiq with a deafening outpouring of love, but their exuberance occasionally cut through his storytelling. A woman in the front repeatedly declared her undying love, and another went so far as to flash the musician. Saadiq's connection to Oakland — the city where his career began — only fueled the hooting and hollering throughout the venue. From namedropping his buddy and school 'bodyguard' Huston Lillard, father of NBA star Demian Lillard, to his alma maters Elmhurst Middle School and Castlemont High School as well as a slew of Oakland landmarks, he received rapturous cheers, many shouting out their connections to each he listed off. Saadiq appeared amused, every so often blowing kisses to fans, but also annoyed. He jokingly scolded and shushed the crowd, threatening to randomly name spots in Walnut Creek or Pinole because, he quipped, 'I know y'all don't leave to go out there.' Of course, the audience was most electrified when Saadiq sang his biggest hits with Tony! Toni! Toné! like 'Feels Good,' "Anniversary" as well as his solo tracks, 'Me and You' and 'Ask of You.' He later rattled off stories about working with the biggest names in the movie and music industry, from filmmakers John Singleton ('Boyz in the Hood') and Oakland's own Ryan Coogler ('Sinners') to Beyoncé and her sister Solange Knowles, the latter whom he called 'one of my favorites.' 'What makes me a great collaborator is that I'm a great listener,' he said, throwing shade at the show's main heckler. 'Not like you. I. Am. A. Listener.' He noted that while he never received awards for his solo work, he got his wins for his collaborations. Most recently, Saadiq won his third Grammy for his contributions to Beyoncé's "Cowboy Carter," which won album of the year at the 67th Grammy Awards. Nostalgia and controversy intertwined as Saadiq mentioned working with Kendrick Lamar ('Why would Drake mess with that dude? And I like Drake!') and while reminiscing about the influence the Isley Brothers had on his music, which led him to bring up that group's frequent collaborator, R. Kelly. 'Kell's a bad boy,' he acknowledged, referring to the disgraced R&B singer convicted of multiple sex crimes. 'They should have gotten him some help.' It was a truly raw, unapologetic look into the 59-year-old's life and career. Just before wrapping up at 11:30 p.m. with anecdotes about his late big brother D'Wayne Wiggins, who died of bladder cancer at 64 in March, he wanted to make sure he made good with the crowd. 'I didn't mind the noise,' he told the packed theater. 'It was all love.'
Los Angeles Times
2 hours ago
- Los Angeles Times
Tony Awards: Hollywood A-listers brought the spotlight to Broadway, but stage thespians carried the day
Broadway finally got its groove back. The 2024-25 season was the highest-grossing season on record and the second-highest in terms of attendance. Hollywood A-listers, such as George Clooney in 'Good Night, and Good Luck,' and Denzel Washington and Jake Gyllenhaal in 'Othello' got in on the action, raising Broadway's media profile along with its ticket prices. Two Emmy-winning alums of HBO's 'Succession,' Sarah Snook in 'The Picture of Dorian Gray' and Kieran Culkin in 'Glengarry Glen Ross,' have been treading the boards, as has Netflix's 'Stranger Things' standout Sadie Sink in 'John Proctor Is the Villain.' And though the experience seems to have been memory-holed, Robert Downey Jr. made a respectable Broadway debut in September in Ayad Akhtar's too-clever-by-half AI drama, 'McNeal.' On Sunday, the Tony Awards paid homage to the astonishing array of acting talent that drew audiences back to the theater. But it wasn't star power that determined the evening's prizes. It was boldness — unadulterated theatrical fearlessness — that carried the day. The ceremony, held at Radio City Music Hall amid the art deco splendor of old New York, was presided over by Tony-winner Cynthia Erivo, a natural wonder of the theatrical universe. One of the turbo-powered stars of the blockbuster screen adaptation of 'Wicked,' she was the ideal host for a Broadway year that owed its success to the unique ability of high-wattage stage performers to forge a singular connection with audiences. Viewers watching the ceremony on CBS were offered a glimpse of the cyclonic energy she can generate in a bubbly opening number celebrating the nominees. It didn't matter that most watching from home hadn't seen the shows name-checked in the specially composed novelty song. The vivacity of the art form broke through the screen courtesy of Erivo's capacity to blast through any barrier with her truthful virtuosity. Will Aronson and Hue Park's 'Maybe Happy Ending' was the evening's big winner, picking up six Tonys, including best musical. Branden Jacobs-Jenkins' 'Purpose,' which received the Pulitzer Prize for drama this year, was chosen as best play in a season showcasing a refreshingly wide range of ambitious playwriting. Anna D. Shapiro's sharply-tuned production of Jonathan Spector's 'Eureka Day,' a bitingly funny satire on the vaccine debate, won for play revival. And Jamie Lloyd's radical reworking of 'Sunset Blvd.' took the prize for musical revival. All in all, it was a strong season for directing. Michael Arden won for his exquisitely humane staging of the futuristic robot musical, 'Maybe Happy Ending.' And Sam Pinkleton was honored for his wild and whirling synchronization of Cole Escola's 'Oh, Mary!' As a critic, I don't usually have to pay for theater tickets, but I got a taste of the ludicrousness when charged $500 to see Washington and Gyllenhaal in a flaccid revival of 'Othello.' Apparently, I got off cheaply compared to a friend who paid even more for a worse seat on the same night. But the price-gouging didn't dent my appreciation for a season that reminded me of the privilege of being in the room where the theatrical magic happens. (Yes, even 'Othello' had its intermittent rewards.) Communing with audiences in the presence of gifted stage performers is one of the last bastions of community in our screen-ridden society. I was grateful that CNN made the agonizingly timely 'Good Night, and Good Luck' available to a wider public, presenting Saturday night's performance live. But watching Clooney and company on TV wasn't the same as being in the Winter Garden with them during the performance. It wasn't simply that the camerawork profoundly altered the visual storytelling. It was that at home on my couch I was no longer enclosed in the same shared space that brought history back to the present for a charged moment of collective reflection. The Tony Awards honored those actors who embraced the immediacy of the theatrical experience and offered us varieties of performance styles that would be hard to find even in the more obscure reaches of Netflix. Cole Escola, the first nonbinary performer to win in the lead actor in a play category, accepted the award for their fiendishly madcap performance in 'Oh, Mary!' — a no-holds-barred farcical display of irreverence that ignited a firestorm of hilarity that threatened to consume all of Broadway. Snook won for her lead performance in 'The Picture of Dorian Gray,' a multimedia collage of Wilde's novel that had the protean 'Succession' star playing opposite screen versions of herself in what was the season's most aerobically taxing performance. Francis Jue, who delivered the evening's most moving and politically pointed speech, won for his shape-shifting (and age-defying) featured performance in the revival of David Henry Hwang's 'Yellow Face.' And Kara Young, who won last year in the featured actress in a play category, repeated for her heightened artistry in 'Purpose,' the kind of extravagant performance no screen could do justice to. Nicole Scherzinger, who was honored as best lead actress in a musical for her portrayal of Norma Desmond in a bracing revival of Andrew Lloyd Webber's 'Sunset Boulevard,' demonstrated the power of theater to seize hold of us when she performed 'As If We Never Said Goodbye' on the telecast. In her Broadway debut, Scherzinger, who came to fame with the Pussycat Dolls, faced stiff competition from Audra McDonald, the six-time Tony winner starring in 'Gypsy.' No performance moved me more this season than McDonald's harrowing portrayal of Rose. In George C. Wolfe's revival, the character is a Black woman struggling not just with her frustrated dreams of stardom displaced onto her children but with the injustice of history itself. McDonald was given the impossible task of performing 'Rose's Turn' on the telecast, her character's Lear-like cri de cœur in song. She delivered, as she always does, but again I wish audiences at home could experience the broken majesty of this number in context at the Majestic Theatre, where theatergoers have been rising up in unison, wiping away tears, to express their gratitude for McDonald's sacrificial generosity. Darren Criss, an alum of 'Glee,' received his first Tony for endowing an outdated robot with a sophisticated taste for jazz with a deft physical life and diffident (yet unmistakable) humanity. His lead performance in 'Maybe Happy Ending' (perfectly in sync with that of his impressive co-star, Helen J Shen) is as responsible for the musical's unexpected success as Arden's staging and Dane Laffrey and George Reeve's Tony-winning scenic design. Natalie Venetia Belcon, the heart and soul of 'Buena Vista Social Club' along with the band, was honored for her featured performance in the musical that tells the story of Cuban musical style that defied history to seduce the world. And Jak Malone, who was responsible for the evening's second most riveting speech, won for his gender-blurring featured performance in'Operation Mincemeat: A New Musical.' These performances, by names you probably don't know all that well, embraced the special properties of an art form that is larger than life and all the more acutely exposed for being so. It takes enormous skill and dedication to find the delicacy in such theatrical grandeur. These artists know that flamboyance needn't preclude subtlety, and that stardom neither guarantees nor bars revelation. Actors from all ranks are clearly hungering for the kind of substance and freedom that the stage can uniquely provide. Off-Broadway has been filled with marquee talents connecting with audiences whose main interest is potent work. Patsy Ferran, starring opposite Paul Mescal in the Almeida Theatre production of 'A Streetcar Named Desire' at the Brooklyn Academy of Music's Harvey Theater, was, hands down, the best performance I saw all year. Andrew Scott in 'Vanya' at the Lucille Lortel Theatre, Adam Driver in Kenneth Lonergan's 'Hold on to Me Darling' also at the Lortel, Lily Rabe in Mark O'Rowe's adaptation of Ibsen's 'Ghosts' at Lincoln Center Theater's Mitzi E. Newhouse and Nina Hoss and Adeel Akhtar in the Donmar Warehouse production of 'The Cherry Orchard' at St. Ann's Warehouse left me feeling, as only theater can, more consciously alive and connected. The speeches at the Tony Awards, for the most part, skirted politics. This reticence was surprising given what we're living through. But there's something deeply political when we gather to look in the mirror that artists hold before nature. The politics are implicit, and this year Broadway reminded us that our humanity depends upon this ancient, timeless art.
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Yahoo
‘Étoile': Exclusive 4-part conversation with creators, star Luke Kirby, cinematographer, and choreographer
Amy Sherman-Palladino and Daniel Palladino wear many hats (literally) on the sets of their TV shows — creators, writers, directors, executive producers. So over the course of their career, from Gilmore Girls to Étoile, they've built a family of trusted professionals around them to help them realize their creative vision, in front of and behind the camera. In Gold Derby's exclusive four-part "Dream Team" conversation series, they open up about how they all work together. It all starts, of course, with their own partnership. Sherman-Palladino and Palladino, who've been married for years, say they've figured out how to divide and conquer the tremendous amount of responsibility that comes with showrunning. "It's pretty organic," says Sherman-Palladino. "Frankly, when you've been doing it this long, what you want is to be jealous of something that someone else has done. ... It keeps you on your toes." More from GoldDerby Tony Talk: Dissecting those shocking wins for 'Purpose,' Nicole Scherzinger, Darren Criss, and more Behind the scenes at the Tony Awards: From Darren Criss to Andrew Lloyd Weber, backstage at Broadway's biggest night 'Legend of Zelda' movie delayed, Snoop Dogg biopic cast, and more of today's top stories When it comes to casting, the Palladinos are known for relying on a troupe of actors and bringing them to each subsequent series. So after Luke Kirby's Emmy-winning turn in The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, it comes as little surprise that they would put him center stage in Étoile. "When writing is as good as theirs is, it's a really good idea, I think, to get out of your own way," says Kirby. "Having a kind of faith in the words can really bring you into new worlds that you don't expect. Their writing is very, very nuanced. I think it's to be deeply felt." To create the look of Étoile, they turned once again to "genius" cinematographer M. David Mullen, the man responsible for making Mrs. Maisel, well, marvelous. "To have somebody be able to go along on that ride and then take what is in your head, understand what it is you're talking about, and then blow it up into this majestic piece that is so much better than you even thought it could be, that's very rare," says Sherman-Palladino, who calls Mullen her "film school." And finally, there's "secret weapon" Marguerite Derricks, the choreographer who's been helping their shows dance since the days of Bunheads. "I wouldn't want to do dance just for dance anymore," says Derricks. "Dance driving the story is just magic. It's really magic. I feel bad for any choreographer that does not get to work with Amy and Dan." These articles and videos are presented by Prime Video. Best of GoldDerby Marlon Wayans on laughing through tragedy in 'Good Grief' and why social media has made comedy 'toxic' Minha Kim 'confronted all new emotions that I had never anticipated' in Season 2 of 'Pachinko' Vincent D'Onofrio teases 'Daredevil: Born Again' Season 2 is 'even more complex and more dangerous' Click here to read the full article.
