Soulful portrayal of a family’s pain

Writer-director Patrick Wang’s deep-tissue humanism is a treasure worth nurturing. His first feature, 2011’s “In the Family,” laid bare a fraught custody battle, and his latest, “A Bread Factory,” earned that overused term “intimate epic.”

In between, in 2015, Wang made “The Grief of Others,” an adaptation of Leah Hager Cohen’s novel about a family dealing with personal trauma. At its center are the Ryries, a household of four in varying states of tension and performative normalcy in the wake of the tragic death, just after delivery, of who would have been their fifth family member.

John (Trevor St. John) and Ricky (Wendy Moniz) don’t have the same marriage, something made clear to their school-bullied teenage son (Jeremy Shinder) and untethered 10-yearold daughter (Oona Laurence). When single, pregnant twentysomething Jessica (Sonya Harum), John’s daughter from a previous relationship, shows up, the family’s energies are both reawakened and redirected, in ways that suggest a path to healing.

Wang approaches storytelling through the internal weather of his characters and long, fixed takes marked by naturalistic dialogue — blink and you might not catch a time-fracturing, nuanced gesture, or crucial piece of information. Harder to miss, however, is the movie’s understated soul, as Wang guides us, sometimes awkwardly, usually touchingly, from isolation and secrets into understanding and connection.

“The Grief of Others.” Not rated. Run time: 1 hour, 43 minutes. Playing: Laemmle Monica Film Center, Santa Monica.

In the Family WENDY MONIZ plays a mother trying to regain a sense of normalcy after the death of her infant.