He’s only twelve days into loss, and everything still smells like the person who’s gone, laundry, prescriptions, even the bank account. Then a stranger kisses him, and the first feeling that isn’t grief arrives with a question that hurts: “Does that make me a bad person?
There are two kinds of grief scenes in movies.
The first kind is the big one: crying in the rain, collapsing on the floor, orchestral music doing emotional CPR.
The second kind is this short film – the kind where grief sounds like an automated bank menu that keeps misunderstanding you, because even your pain has to “state the nature of your call.” And honestly, that’s the one that hits harder.
If I’m Good follows Sam, a man who is technically still functioning… but only in the way a phone with 2% battery is “functioning.” His husband, Clint, died in an accident just days ago, and the world did not pause for even a second. Clint’s name is still on their bank account, his laundry is still sitting there like a quiet accusation, and Sam is stuck with the kind of practical problems nobody teaches you how to do while your heart is in pieces.
Grief as a to-do list
The movie understands something brutal and true: after someone dies, life turns into paperwork and awkward errands. You’re not just “mourning.” You’re calling banks. You’re trying to remove a name. You’re staring at a washing machine like it’s a NASA control panel. And you’re picking up prescriptions that still exist in the system, because the system doesn’t know how to process loss.
Sam’s friends try to help in the normal human way – come stay with us, be around people, you don’t have to do this alone. Sam’s response is also painfully human: don’t try to fix me just by being near me. (If grief were a cold, we’d all be cured by hugging.)
Then, the pharmacy scene happens
Sam ends up at a pharmacy, and what should be a routine stop turns into the film’s little lightning strike. The shopping basket itself is almost a joke – chips, soda, some random “weird party” energy, plus a prescription – like grief made a grocery list while half asleep.
Enter Jorge, the pharmacy associate who’s charming in that slightly messy, too-honest way. They talk, they tease, they circle each other carefully – and then, in a moment that feels both impulsive and weirdly gentle, Jorge kisses Sam.
Jorge pulls back, apologizing because he assumes Sam is married. Sam answers with the line that breaks the room: his husband died 12 days ago.
That’s the whole emotional engine of the story right there: the collision between wanting to feel something alive and the fear that doing so makes you a bad person. Sam spells it out in a rush – the bank account, the laundry, the pea milk in the fridge, the prescriptions, the accident, the lack of time to “prepare” for grief… and then that devastating little self-rule: he can’t want someone else… not if he’s good.
A romantic gesture… that’s also kind of illegal
Jorge is not a perfect angel in a cardigan. He admits he looked up Sam’s phone number in the system and saved it – which is, yes, extremely illegal, and also… emotionally on-brand for a story where everyone is a little untethered.
But the film doesn’t frame it like some grand rom-com “destiny” move. It frames it like a flawed person reaching for connection the wrong way, because he saw something in Sam’s face that looked like it needed air.
Why it works
This short doesn’t try to solve grief in ten minutes. It doesn’t give you a neat “healed” ending. What it gives you is smaller and more honest: permission to be messy. Permission to feel desire while you’re still wearing the ring. Permission to not know who you are yet, but still answer when someone asks, “what are you like?”
If I’m Good is tender, awkward, funny in the darkest little ways, and quietly brave. It looks grief in the face and says: you don’t have to earn the right to keep living. You just have to keep living.
