‘Three Goodbyes’ Review: Alba Rohrwacher Dazzles in Isabel Coixet’s Humane, Heartfelt Drama

“I get along without you very well,” sings Nina Simone in her beautiful, grazed voice at a pivotal moment in Isabel Coixet’s “Three Goodbyes,” a glimmering drama adapted from a short story collection by celebrated Italian writer and activist Michela Murgia. Lit equally by a radiant Alba Rorhwacher and by a sweet but never saccharine presentiment of future nostalgia (Murgia’s 2023 book was published just months before she died of cancer at 51), the film earns the lovely song fully. It too, is a funny, rueful valentine to the fine art of the farewell — the smaller ones that litter our lives and the big final one at the end.

The first goodbye, however, is pretty banal even if, when it happens, it is fairly catclysmic for the lovers it separates. Returning home from some opening or other one evening, Marta (Rohrwacher) and her partner Antonio (Elio Germano) get into an…