{"id":548072,"date":"2026-01-28T01:32:10","date_gmt":"2026-01-28T01:32:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/548072\/"},"modified":"2026-01-28T01:32:10","modified_gmt":"2026-01-28T01:32:10","slug":"jay-duplass-so-so-grief-tragicomedy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/548072\/","title":{"rendered":"Jay Duplass’ So-So Grief Tragicomedy"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tAfter a 14-year hiatus during which he focused on directing television and acting, Jay Duplass<\/a> made a welcome return to features in 2025 with The Baltimorons<\/a>, a gentle May-December romance with an After Hours vibe and an unassuming charm that sneaks up on you like a surprise hug. I wish See You When I See You had a similar effect, but despite its sincerity and the raw pain of shattering real-life experience that infuses it, this feels like a knockoff struck from the template of a thousand bittersweet, funny-sad indie grief dramas branded with the old-school Sundance<\/a> stamp.<\/p>\n

\n\tDysfunctional family whose members seem to have forgotten how to communicate? Check. Belabored metaphor that never adds up to much (in this case a sage grouse at risk of extinction)? Check. Surreally stylized flourishes that are both awkwardly realized and inorganic to the prevailing mood and style? Check. Random nostalgic nods to \u201890s bands? Check. Treasured childhood memory tarnished by soul-crushing trauma? Check. Tinkly piano score poised to underline every emotional beat? Check. The list could go on.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tSee You When I See You\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\tThe Bottom Line<\/p>\n

\tNot if I see you first.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\tVenue<\/strong>: Sundance Film Festival (Premieres)
Cast<\/strong>: Cooper Raiff, Hope Davis, Lucy Boynton, Ariela Barer, Kumail Nanjiani, Poorna Jagannathan, David Duchovny, Kaitlyn Dever
Director<\/strong>: Jay Duplass
Screenwriter<\/strong>: Adam Cayton-Holland, based on his book, Tragedy Plus Time: A Tragi-Comic Memoir
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t1 hour 42 minutes\n\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\tAll this is a shame since first-time screenwriter Adam Cayton-Holland, adapting his 2018 memoir Tragedy Plus Time, is clearly drawing from a very personal well in depicting with candor the spiraling chaos of a young comedy writer as he struggles to move forward after his beloved younger sister\u2019s suicide. The authenticity of the writer-protagonist\u2019s feelings is undermined by the banal familiarity of a specific indie-film model.<\/p>\n

\n\tIt\u2019s doubly regrettable because Cooper Raiff<\/a> pours a ton of heart and humor, along with PTSD, into the author\u2019s stand-in, Aaron Whistler. He\u2019s likable and funny, and even when the character is pushing people away like a flailing mess, he never forfeits the audience\u2019s compassion.<\/p>\n

\n\tDuplass could not have wished for better preparation for material of this nature than his work as producer and director of six episodes \u2014 including the pilot \u2014 of HBO\u2019s sublime Bridget Everett series Somebody Somewhere<\/a>. That series started from a similar place, with a central character trying to regain her footing after the shattering loss of a sibling and tending to deflect her sorrow with humor. Every single member of the ensemble felt fully lived-in and relatable, something that can be said for only some of the principal roles here.<\/p>\n

\n\tIt\u2019s been two months since Leah (Kaitlyn Dever<\/a>) took her own life and her devastated family has still not been able to agree on funeral arrangements \u2014 if they are to have one at all. The urn containing her ashes sits conspicuously on the mantlepiece in her parents\u2019 loveless bedroom.<\/p>\n

\n\tLeah\u2019s mother Page (Hope Davis<\/a>) has become closed-off and sour, doing her best to ignore her own grave health situation; her husband Robert (David Duchovny<\/a>) pours himself into his work as a civil rights attorney, avoiding the subject of Leah; their other daughter Emily (Lucy Boynton<\/a>), who has her own young son to care for, urges Aaron to see a therapist and goes from impatience to anger at the extent to which his grief has hijacked everyone else\u2019s loss. Aaron and Leah were always members of a private club from which Emily felt excluded.<\/p>\n

\n\tA big part of Aaron\u2019s trauma is that he was the one who found his little sister\u2019s body; when he is forced, after a DUI charge, to sign up for a mental health diversion program, he\u2019s uncooperative and hostile with the therapist, who tells him nothing he didn\u2019t already know. Later, when he finds an empathetic therapist with whom he connects (Poorna Jagannathan), Aaron initially remains blocked, only able to revisit the night he found Leah dead up to a point.<\/p>\n

\n\tRaiff is very good in these scenes, which makes it frustrating that the memory flashes throughout of time spent with Leah are so clunky and obvious. Dever is always a compelling presence, but Leah seems more like a bundle of exposed nerve endings than a real person \u2014 the dangerous, out-of-control highs, the precipitous lows, the psych ward stints. The worst part, though, is a thuddingly literal device so poorly handled it yanks you out of the movie every time \u2014 a hole opens up in the ceiling or sky at a certain point in Aaron\u2019s recollections, and Leah is sucked up into the atmosphere.<\/p>\n

\n\tThere are sweet interludes when Aaron reconnects with his girlfriend Camila (Ariela Barer<\/a>), who is furious about him ghosting her for months until she learns the reason. Still, it\u2019s clear to her that Aaron is not OK, causing her to pull away again.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe scenes that work less well and seem virtually superfluous are those with Kumail Nanjiani<\/a> as Adeel, an environmental activist who drags Aaron along with him to break into a fracking site that is disturbing the breeding ground of\u2026the sage grouse.<\/p>\n

\n\tDuplass can\u2019t be accused of lacking sensitivity as a director, and in the moments when See You When I See You works best, the movie has an infectious warmth. Until it turns into treacly clich\u00e9. The performances mostly are better than the material deserves \u2014 Raiff in particular, but also Davis and Boynton. No one enjoys beating up on a film in which the writer has invested so much of himself and his pain. But Cayton-Holland and Duplass have somehow made an authentic tragedy feel phony and unaffecting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After a 14-year hiatus during which he focused on directing television and acting, Jay Duplass made a welcome…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":548073,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[9],"tags":[240882,156870,44155,171,2104,240767,240768,113953,98596,240769,46541,235951,124933,237934,67,132,68],"class_list":["post-548072","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-ariela-barer","tag-cooper-raiff","tag-david-duchovny","tag-entertainment","tag-festivals","tag-hope-davis","tag-jay-duplass","tag-kaitlyn-dever","tag-kumail-nanjiani","tag-lucy-boynton","tag-sundance","tag-sundance-2026","tag-sundance-film-festival","tag-sundance-film-festival-reviews","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-us"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115970149449505009","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/548072","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=548072"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/548072\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/548073"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=548072"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=548072"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=548072"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}