Addressing Grief Head-On in Customary Grief Drama from Jay Duplass

Comic Adam Cayton-Holland does not need to overlook his late sister, who died by suicide. He does not need to overlook the sensation of discovering her physique, nor even the phobia of erroneously considering he may’ve executed one thing extra to avoid wasting her. He cannot overlook what all of it looks like — the ache, the guilt, the horror — with out additionally forgetting the complete reminiscence of her. You’ll be able to’t be selective about reminiscence, nor about grief.

See You After I See Youhis adaptation of his personal memoir, Tragedy Plus Timegoals to seize a wierd, seemingly contradictory notion: how will you cope with grief with out suppressing it? It is a difficult query to ponder, and, at its finest, See You After I See You makes cinematic what has beforehand felt so dry in different movies: a remedy session.

This is not bizarre remedy, although. It is EMDR (Eye Motion Desensitization and Reprocessing). For the unitiated: EMDR is usually used for folks scuffling with post-traumatic stress dysfunction, a course of whereby the affected person makes use of some type of alternating mechanism (normally hand-held buzzers) whereas recalling an particularly painful reminiscence. The concept is that you just slowly prepare the mind to file away one thing disturbing that has been stopping you from working healthily in your every day life. Not erasing a reminiscence, however perhaps decreasing its sting.

Cayton-Holland’s on-screen avatar Aaron (Cooper Raiff) takes his time attending to a spot the place he is prepared to even step right into a remedy session, not to mention one that’s notoriously as intense and as demanding as this, however, as soon as he does, director Jay Duplass actually superbly places us within the footwear of somebody present process this course of.

When the movie is not dramatizing his recuperation, See You After I See You is much less fascinating. It is a standard-bearer movie, an actual fastball down the center, which hits all of its assumed itinerant emotional beats proper on the right track, with out ever actually difficult us in any main method. As Aaron, Raiff is underwhelming. He is an excellent goofball, however when he is tasked with pained anger or overwhelming disappointment, all of it feels a bit false.

His ache is palpable as a result of the scenario is, not essentially as a result of Raiff is performing all of it that nicely. Aaron’s finest buddy and youthful sister, Leah (Kaitlyn Dever) was a plucky lady, a gifted artist, and each bit Aaron’s equal in wit. In flashbacks and occasional fantasy sequences, their relationship comes throughout as deep and tender, if considerably rote. Little doubt Cayton-Holland and his late sister had a particular bond, however raucous moments at a bar do not essentially talk that.

Aaron’s surviving household all deal with Leah’s loss of life in several methods. His older sister, A-type persona Emily (Lucy Boynton), approaches every part within the rule-following, organizational mode that she’s attacked every part else. His sentimentalist father, Robert (David Duchovny), desires to maintain a lot of Leah’s stuff, together with her macaroni artwork from childhood. And his mom, Web page (Hope Davis), immerses herself within the native reason behind saving the Sage Grouse of Colorado in a transparent try to distance herself from grief’s inevitable toll.

Everyone seems to be avoiding one thing, which turns into tougher when Web page finds a lump in her breast, and the potential of much more layered trauma appears inescapable. Watching Web page and Robert’s marriage take an enormous hit from the lack of their daughter, and subsequent disagreements over the best way to deal with the potential of most cancers is shifting, however it’s actually unusual and irritating when the script jumps from pressure to sudden answer on this and different threads with nearly zero clarification.

That’s to say: the movie struggles to search out its correct tempo. Typically, the movie strikes patiently, with delicate take care of its characters; at different occasions, it rushes previous moments that you just’d usually need to bask in. The on-again, off-again romance between Aaron and hospital nurse Camila (Ariela Barer) is generally a waste; Barer is fascinating, however their dalliance by no means comes throughout as all that actual or plausible. Most confounding of all is that, regardless of its supply materials, a lot of the characterization right here may’ve been beamed in from a thousand different movies.

Nonetheless, a lot of it does hit dwelling. There’s an appreciated susceptible honesty concerning the movie, and a really clear message that therapeutic trauma can not probably occur with out truly addressing it. The movie’s title is a reference to the ultimate textual content message the household acquired earlier than Leah’s loss of life, however it may simply as simply be a brand new message Aaron is making an attempt to ship to himself. “I acknowledge my trauma is there,” the message says, “however I get to determine once I see you.”

See You After I See You screened on the 2026 Sundance Movie Pageant.