Review: 'The Friend' is a gentle comedy-drama about grief and writing, bolstered by Naomi Watts and a friendly four-legged co-star

In the quietly effective comedy-drama “The Friend,” Naomi Watts is blessed with one of the best scene partners an actor has ever had — a stoic Great Dane named Bing.

Watts plays Iris Dickson, a New York author who’s grieving over the recent death of her writing mentor and longtime friend, Walter Meredith (Bill Murray). At the memorial service, it’s clear that Iris isn’t the only one processing Walter’s death by suicide. The mourners include two ex-wives, Barbara (Noma Dumezweni) and Elaine (Carla Gugino), current wife Tuesday (Constance Wu), his publisher Jerry (Josh Pais), and his daughter, Val (Sara Pidgeon). Notably, Val’s mother isn’t any of the three wives, but a woman who had a brief fling with Walter shortly after he divorced Elaine.

While Iris is looking through the files for her unfinished novel, which Walter didn’t like, and working with Val to edit a book of Walter’s years of correspondence, Barbara asks Iris over to help with something. That something is to take custody of Walter’s dog, Apollo — played by Bing. Iris is ill-equipped to take on a dog that outweighs her, but she’s also unable to say no.

So Iris must deal with a large animal in a small apartment — a place that strictly does not allow dogs, which her building super, Hektor (Felix Solis), reminds her regularly. Iris looks for an animal sanctuary that takes Great Danes, and in the meantime tries to deal with Apollo’s eating habits, sleeping arrangements and distrust of her building’s tiny elevator.

As the story — adapted from Sigrid Nunez’s novel by the writing-directing team of Scott McGehee and David Siegel (“The Deep End,” “What Maisie Knew”) — gently unfolds, we come to know that Apollo is a good listener, particularly of anyone reading Walter’ words aloud. He also becomes a vessel through which Iris finally gets to process her complicated feelings for Walter and the way he chose to exit her life.

Watts gives a strong performance as Iris, a woman forced by weird circumstance to get out of her own head to deal with the memory of her mentor and the needs of this stoic mass of a dog. Murray, seen in flashbacks, adds a hint of his impish personality to Walter, and makes it easier to understand why so many women could love him and be aggravated by him.

But the character you’ll come away loving in “The Friend” is Apollo, and credit to Bing and his trainer/parent, Bev Klingensmith, for delivering a dog performance that isn’t instantly cloying and comical.

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‘The Friend’

★★★

Opens Friday, April 4, in theaters. Rated R for language including a sexual reference. Running time: 120 minutes.