‘Miss You, Love You’ review: Allison Janney and Andrew Rannells lead HBO’s thoughtful but overly moralized grief drama

It takes a while to figure out exactly who Jimmy (Andrew Rannells) and Diane (Allison Janney), the two lost and lonely heroes of the HBO series, are. I miss you, I love youto each other. It may be his mother, but she asks him his name when he enters her house. He could be an advisor of sorts, but he never seems more confident than he does when you ask how this is supposed to work.

As it turns out, we’re not the only ones: Diane and Jamie don’t really know who they are to each other, either. They are strangers, socially connected to someone who is not there, and circumstantially connected to someone else who has died. It’s a clever conceit, using the ambiguity of their dynamic as a way to explore their messy, even ugly feelings surrounding the people who matter most to them. But the influence of excessive refinement undermines the severity of the feelings, and prevents them from having the effect they should.

The screenplay by Jim Rash (who also directed) reveals the actual explanation for Jimmy’s presence at Diane’s in pieces. Eventually, it became clear that Diane had recently lost her husband of 24 years, Henry. Jamie, her son’s assistant, Tyler, is here to help with funeral arrangements while Tyler is stuck abroad on business. On paper, Jimmy seems like the assistant a devastated widow would dream of – competent, sympathetic, and almost pathologically determined to be of use. But Jimmy is no replacement for Diane’s semi-estranged son and they both know it, even if she says, “You’d be surprised how low this is,” when Jimmy tries to admit it.

Diane’s prick isn’t unique to Jimmy, and it’s not new. Since moving to New Mexico from New York three years ago, she says, “Henry has made friends here. I’ve made acquaintances.” With no one else to turn to but Jimmy, I miss you, I love you It unfolds almost as a duet, despite brief appearances by Bonnie Hunt, Oscar Nunez, and Susie Nakamura as several townsfolk. Most of their interactions take place within the confines of her elegant two-bed, one-bath abode, despite the occasional detour to the restaurant or grocery store.

The small cast and closed setting give away I miss you, I love you It almost feels like a play, so much so that I was surprised to learn that it’s not based on one play. This feeling is heightened by performances that seem a little elevated for the intimate drama that it actually is, and which may feel at home in front of rows of theatergoers. The dialogue unfolds in rhythmic exchanges that are too precise to seem natural and monologues that feel more like acting exercises than spontaneous expressions of emotion. Even the blocking and photography (by Daniel Moder) seem designed to prioritize our understanding of the characters, rather than their understanding of each other.

However, within the constraints of a TV movie that seems to wish it were a stage play, the performances are good enough to keep things interesting. Janie knows how to embody Diane, her stance held up against a world that can’t seem to stop throwing her blows and her face fixed in a near-constant state of protective disapproval. On the receiving end of Diane’s crude, sour comments (this is a woman who demands to know, “Am I too much?” and then, when reassured that she’s not, responds with, “That’s a shame, because I’m trying to be”), Rannells absorbs every blow with a compassion so intense it verges on desperation.

I miss you, I love you It is hardly what you would call unexpected; If you’ve watched an indie drama about an unlikely friendship between two strangers, you can guess the basic outline of this drama. But she takes advantage of the fact that there is no pre-existing model or clear destination for the relationship between a widow and her son’s personal assistant. The story is able to wander freely through their pain, deflecting or doubling down as needed.

Mostly, it ends up being so wrapped around the two men who are at the forefront of my mind that their absence turns into a presence in itself. Henry’s loss is as ambient and essential as the air, and we feel it not just in Diane’s grief but in the physical artifacts he left behind: the unfinished painting in the corner of the room, the succulent withering without his green thumb, the empty bowls he insisted on continuing to leave for a shot taken by an owl weeks before his death. If it sounds more like an idealized memory of someone than a real person, that’s the point.

Tyler’s absence is a more intrusive kind of absence, one that makes itself known with intensity pingText messages that Diane can’t help but notice seem to find their way to Jimmy’s phone and not hers. More than Henry, Tyler is the gaping hole around which Diane and Jamie’s relationship grows, as they each feel the other’s complicated feelings for him before they can even admit them to themselves.

If Tyler seems more like a projection than someone who’s supposed to have his own perspective on his relationships with them — to the point where I’m starting to feel a little sorry that the guy was insulted in absentia — then maybe that’s the point, too. When their emotions finally boil over in the third act, I miss you, I love you It’s most effective for the approach of Rush, who won an Oscar for co-writing Alexander Payne’s offbeat grief drama. Grandchildrenrefuses to preface it with convenient platitudes or tidy life lessons.

“I’m not saying that for sympathy. I’m not saying that for excuse,” Jimmy exclaimed after expressing his deepest fears and remorse to Diane. “I don’t know where else to put it.” There is a catharsis in simply allowing himself to finally feel and express these feelings. If only I miss you, I love you He was more able to let us feel them too.