The opening scene of Our friends, a weeping indie suit built from the design of a distressing true story, finds a husband and wife at the precipice of a difficult conversation. It’s time for Nicole (Dakota Johnson) and Matt (Casey Affleck) to talk to their kids. Nicole, we will soon know, is sick and, although it takes another hour for the film to reveal the specific nature of what they are going to disclose, it is clear that the discussion will not be easy. At least they have a useful instruction from doctors: avoid euphemisms. Give it to them directly. Because there must be no misunderstanding about what is to come. They have to face reality head-on and together.
There is a certain irony in that in the media res prologue – one that will be clear to anyone who reads the original material, “The friend: love is not a big enough word”, by Matthew Teague. In his award-winning essay, published in Squire in 2015, the journalist reports the time he spent caring for his wife after she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer, and also how his best friend, Dane Faucheux, moved to help during this impossible crucible for the family. It is an unmistakably honest memoir, cataloging candidly every ugly detail – medical and psychological – to the point that a truly faithful adaptation would be more disturbing than any horror film released last year. Our friends it’s not that movie. It is sweet and engaging and sometimes even moving, but also, in its selective dramatization, very Easier. Which means that it approaches the story itself somewhat euphemistically, treating the audience with kid gloves, omitting the most unpleasant truths from the family experience.
Directed by Gabriela Cowperthwaite, who punched less in her documentary Blackfish, Our friends it does not deviate so much from Teague’s account, but it does give it a new form and a certain seriewicious Indiewood shine. As the title suggests, the focus is partly on Dane (Jason Segel), a close college friend of the couple who offers to stay at his Alabama home for a few days after Nicole’s diagnosis – a deal that has become elusive, As those days bled in weeks, months and more than a year, Dane basically stopped (if not completely abandoning) his life in New Orleans to help look after his two daughters, Molly (Isabella Kai) and Evangeline (Violet McGraw). The script, by Brad Ingelsby, features a flashback structure, cutting off current scenes of hospital visits and worsening conditions to fill the story of a friendship on the way to a medical crisis.
In his essay, Teague makes few attempts to break or explain Dane’s sacrifice: Among other things, it is a reverent and grateful tribute to his friend’s selfless insistence on just being there throughout the heartache and horror challenge. Divorced from a purely first-person perspective, Our friends tensions for the understanding that is not always found: one can admire his dramatic theories – the vague suggestion that Dane’s infinite support was partially derived from a desire to give more meaning to his own life, with low romantic or professional “success” – while it still feels like Segel is playing more saint than man. Flashbacks offer a backstory, but not much extra dimension.
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Segel, of course, has spent much of his career exploring the vagaries of the male bond, from the goofy and sweet Apatovian bromance to I love you man for the almost thorny friendship of The end of the tour. It is not surprising, perhaps, that Our friends hits his stride by centering the relationship between Dane and Matt, finding conflict in its origins (the false alarm of romantic competition) and in its margins. Affleck is also in his wheelhouse: four years after his tremendous Oscar-winning performance of guilt and regret crystallized in Manchester By The Sea, he is playing another man numb by unfathomable difficulties. (His voice, which ranges from whisper to murmur, is especially suitable for characters almost choked by their feelings.)
Still Our friends it keeps us out of that pain, never offering the kind of window into Teague’s heart and mind that his writing intrinsically could offer. Is this the case for a story perfected in its original format – a personal essay imperfectly shaped in cinema? The film does best when it is more specific, focusing on the disheartening inevitability of well-meaning friends disappearing when things get tough or moments of casual tragedy, like Matt watching what it is like to braid in anticipation of having to do this for his daughter. At other times, Cowperthwaite’s approach suggests elegant blah blah blah: instead of letting us dive into the heart of the matter, the film tends to float in a vaguely malice montage of excursions with bucket lists and distressed hugs.
We begin to wonder if the achronological structure is just a way to postpone everything that is inconveniently messed up in Teague’s essay, like a difficult conversation that he is trying to avoid. “We don’t tell each other the truth about death,” writes the author at the beginning of his article. “It is grotesque. It is unworthy. “But Our friends saves us from the bloody details on almost every corner, cleaning up a story whose power stemmed, strongly, from his willingness to be painfully true about what cancer can do to the body. Cowperthwaite barely seems ready to make Johnson, who never loses his movie star shine, even when his character – the most underdeveloped of the film’s trio – becomes unrecognizable to those in his life. In At some point, Nicole begins to wear a wig around the house to entertain visitors, performing in good health instead of letting anyone see the reality of her condition. It is as good a metaphor as any for the way Our friends smoothes your own strokes.