Netflix film “Good Grief”, which was released a few days ago, attempts to present a sincere and humorous drama about personal grief, and it mostly succeeds in my trivial opinion. While it has some notable flaws including its predictable narrative and a number of underdeveloped supporting characters, the movie is fairly engaging mainly thanks to the good efforts from its main cast members, who often hold the film together even when it lags or stumbles from time to time.

At the beginning, we see how things have been going well for Marc (Daniel Levy) and his husband Oliver (Luke Evans) during the annual Christmas party being held at their apartment in London. While Oliver is a writer currently enjoying the big success of some popular young adult novel series, Marc has collaborated with his husband as the illustrator of his husband’s books, and they look like a pretty happy couple to not only themselves but also many others at their party.

However, Oliver soon has to leave for Paris due to a little job to do there, and then an unexpected incident occurs not long after his departure. He dies due to a very unfortunate car accident, and Marc naturally becomes quite devastated to say the least. During next several months, he silently copes with his immense grief while not knowing what to do next, and his two best friends, Thomas (Himesh Patel) and Sophie (Ruth Negga), are willing to provide comfort and support to him as much as possible.

In the end, Marc decides to accept Oliver’s death more as opening a little letter left by Oliver right before his death, but he only feels more hurt because of what Oliver wrote in his letter. It turns out that Oliver had been having an affair behind his back, and he was seriously considering leaving Marc for some guy at that time. In addition, Marc finds out that Oliver bought an apartment in Paris, which was apparently for him and his new lover.

Without telling anything to Thomas and Sophie, Marc subsequently goes to Paris along with them for getting to know more about what Oliver was doing behind his back. As reminded more that Oliver was really ready to leave him at that time, he comes to feel more anger and sadness, and he is not cheered much even when his two friends try to have a little fun evening along with him.

Marc later decides to have an impromptu date with some handsome French guy he met some time ago, and that is where the mood becomes a little more serious than before. Although they do not know that much about each other, Theo (Arnaud Valois) shows some care and interest to Marc as opening himself more to him, and he even generously lets Marc express more grief as giving him a brief but precious private moment involved with several famous paintings by a certain French painter.

I think the movie could be better if it simply strolled along with Marc and his unexpected friend during the rest of its running time, but the screenplay by director/writer/co-producer Daniel Levy, who incidentally made a feature film debut here in this film, tries to handle some other things in the story, and that is when the movie gets less interesting as only ending up scratching the surface. For example, we never get to know much about the personal issues behind Sophie’s frequently exuberant attitude, and the movie also seems to hesitate to delve more into the past relationship between Marc and Thomas, who was once his lover before Marc met Oliver.

At least, the movie keeps its heart intact as anchored well by Levy’s earnest low-key acting, which feels a bit more serious than his flamboyant Emmy-winning turn in his acclaimed TV comedy series “Schitt’s Creek”. While generating a convincing sense of intimacy with Luke Evans in a few scenes between them early in the film, Levy is also believable as Marc struggles with his mixed feelings about his dead husband along the story, and we come to care more about his emotional struggle even though he is often pathetically self-absorbed as pointed out later in the movie.

In case of several other main cast members of the film, they dutifully fill their respective supporting parts, and they manage to leave some impression even though their supporting characters feel rather perfunctory at times. While Ruth Negga demonstrates a more lightweight side of her considerable talent compared to “Loving” (2016) and “Passing” (2021), Himesh Patel, who has steadily advanced since I noticed him via “Yesterday” (2019) and “Tenet” (2020), is solid in his understated comic role, and Arnaud Valois, who was memorable in “120 BPM (Beats per Minute)” (2017), clicks well with Levy during several key moments between them. Emma Corrin, Kaitlan Dever, and David Bradley simply come and then go to my disappointment, but Bradley, a dependable British character actor who is still working despite being 81 at present (Remember that cantankerous caretaker in Harry Potter movies?), makes the best of his brief appearance as Oliver’s father at least.

In conclusion, “Good Grief” is the modestly enjoyable first feature film from Levy, who may move onto better things considering his competent handling of mood and performance. I still think it could be improved in one way or another, but I and a friend of mine had a mostly good time with it yesterday, so I will not grumble for now.