Our Friend

An American film based on a true story. Nicole and Matthew are married with two daughters. Nicole is diagnosed with cancer. Matthew is a journalist and his work keeps him travelling. Now he has to look after the children and manage his wife's treatment, and cannot do both. Their friend Dane arrives. He came to stay a few days; he stays. He leaves his job, leaves his own life and moves in. He cooks, takes the children to school and keeps track of the medication. What the film describes is not the illness but the presence of that third person: he does something nobody expected of him and keeps it up for years. The narrative does not run straight. Years are skipped between scenes; it moves back and forth to before the diagnosis, to how they met and to after. That structure takes the chronology of the illness out of the centre. The emptiness in Dane's own life is part of the narrative as well; he finds a place in this family and his own relationships come apart because of it. The source is a magazine piece written by Matthew Teague. Dakota Johnson plays Nicole, Casey Affleck plays Matthew and Jason Segel plays Dane. Gabriela Cowperthwaite directed. A warm choice for anyone who likes drama built on friendship. Before you watch, know this: the film treats terminal illness directly and its last section is hard.