GOOD GRIEF. With a brief break in the rain at last, I was in no mood to delve into the weedy waters of grief this week but here we are. Had it not been Dan Levy writing, directing and starring in the Netflix drama/comedy/romance, I would have spared myself all thought beyond what an 80-minute action movie would have asked of me. But I owe much of pandemic survival to Levy's affronted barbs, unraveling calm and surprising vulnerability over six seasons of Schitt's Creek, in which he starred with his father Eugene Levy, to whom he owes the most expressive brows in the business. The promise of familiar comfort — Dan Levy making clever assessments of his own mental state while draped in very expensive sweaters — won out. And good thing, too. Good Grief is not spectacular in style or groundbreaking in substance, and the emotional turmoil of the wealthy and attractive may not feel like the rightful focus of the moment. But its characters and their relationships come to mean something to the audience watching them figure out themselves and each other. Here, the friendships, not to mention queer friendships, so often sidelined in romantic movies are given room for exploration.

On Christmas Eve, book illustrator Marc (Levy) and his rich, handsome, charming, gregarious and theatrically affectionate husband, Oliver (Luke Evans letting a little gray in), whose blockbuster books Marc illustrates, are throwing a party. Attending amid the packed London home are Marc's besties Sophie (Ruth Negga, Irish accent at 10) and Thomas (Himesh Patel, clearly beloved by wardrobe). When Oliver is killed in a crash en route from the party to a Paris book signing (who does this on Christmas?), it's Sophie and Thomas who help him carry on, such as he does, numbed out and cocooned in his very nice home. As the year anniversary of Oliver's death approaches and the details of his estate come to light, Marc is confronted not only with the realities of his loss, but realities of his marriage. But instead of confiding in his friends, really his only family, he whisks them to Paris to stay in the apartment Oliver kept there. Of course, he's not the only one whose life is a mess and the trio bring more in their baggage than their extensive collection of excellent coats. Sophie's hard partying and commitment aversion tag along to the City of Lights, as does the melancholy Thomas has been harboring.

Negga is a scene stealer whose range never ceases to surprise, though it's a pleasure to see her being funny here. There's tremendous affection, humor and chemistry between the three leads, with Patel as Negga and Levy's warm, understated foil. Someone please give Patel a lead role in a sweeping romantic drama — he has not yet begun to yearn. As Marc, Levy leans away from the kind portrayals of mourning we're used to seeing in awards season clips and toward something pushed down and away as he slowly learns composure and containment are not the same as coping. Levy's writing, too, speaks to the daily weight of loss, which Marc describes as a kind of ulcer that never heals, something that keeps you from breathing as you did before. The comedy comes in small moments of awkwardness, and Levy is effortlessly funny tossing out an aside as David Schitt might or pleading with/bullying the staff at a Paris boutique.

Equally small and sweet is the budding romance, if not relationship, with the matter-of-fact Theo (Arnaud Valois) in the second half of the film. Still, the love stories at the movie's heart are between Marc and Oliver, and Marc and his friends. Sophie may as well be talking of herself when she consoles Marc, "He did some shady shit to you but he loved you so hard." Frank, though sometimes first-date vague, conversations about relationships and feelings are anchored by the language of a particular branch of millennials for whom therapy and self-reflection are givens. That's not a knock; here, the vocabulary serves honesty, not obfuscation or pretense.

It's a generous move to give everyone a story, as Good Grief does, and even more so to ultimately wish them all well amid the mess. It's kind enough for one to forgive a little corniness in the wrap-up, or maybe I didn't mind because getting there wasn't easy and we could all use a soft landing. R. 100M. NETFLIX.

Jennifer Fumiko Cahill (she/her) is the arts and features editor at the Journal. Reach her at (707) 442-1400, extension 320, or [email protected]. Follow her on Instagram @JFumikoCahill and on Mastodon @jenniferfumikocahill.

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