Pain painted beautifully

A comedy? In the sense that bleak laughter is the last resort of the afflicted, yes. Bearing a rough resemblance to 2006’s “Little Children’’ in its open-eyed take on suburban discontents, this pained, often beautiful film is about two people who’ve essentially died yet are surprised — and saddened, and annoyed — to discover they’re still living. The auto accident that claimed their son is eight months in the past when “Rabbit Hole’’ opens, but Becca (Nicole Kidman) and Howie (Aaron Eckhart) are just coming out of a fugue state of mourning. What does that look like and will the world let them? These are the questions the movie ponders.

They go to group counseling with other grieving parents, but Becca is creeped out by the God talk and by the couples who’ve been attending for years. However she chooses to cope with her pain, it won’t be by becoming addicted to it. So she starts clearing out the boy’s closet and taking his drawings off the fridge; in one awful scene, she “accidentally’’ deletes a video from her husband’s iPhone. To Howie, this is an act of sacrilege, something so wrong he can barely put words to it.

Lindsay-Abaire’s dialogue and Mitchell’s gentle direction never press the film’s points. Instead, they simply observe as the couple run on parallel tracks, veering away and toward each other. Howie strikes up a secret friendship with one of the counseling group’s moms (Sandra Oh) that involves grateful flirtation and other illicit activities. Becca chooses to stalk the teenage boy (Miles Teller) who drove the car that hit their son, eventually sharing with him a hesitant but genuine companionship of the damned. Teller is very good as an average kid whose sudden acquaintance with guilt has left him decades older than his peers.