[Film Review] All of Us Strangers (2023)

Calibrating a ghost story originated from Japanese screenwriter and novelist Taichi Yamada’s (1934-2023) 1987 novel “Strangers”, Andrew Haigh’s ALL OF US STRANGERS transposes the milieu to a contemporary London. With its heightened aura of variegated lighting that is anything but natural like his previous films, notably, WEEKEND (2011), which has put Haigh’s name on the map, and all the empty space that underscore the solipsistic existence of Adam (Scott), a TV writer living alone in an apartment of a tower block, the film establishes itself as a mood piece of a gay man’s solitude in the universe.

Part romance, Adam meeting-cute with Harry (Mescal), his neighbor living a few floors beneath, part surreal encounter, Adam constantly visiting his old digs and inexplicably resuming communications with his deceased parents (Bell and Foy), both died in a freaky car accident when he was 12, Haigh’s film is an earnest plea of reconciling with one’s past before moving on.

Scarred by his parents’ sudden departure, Adam is left with some serious wounds and unanswered questions that he cannot discard as he grows up and enters adulthood. During him and Harry’s first meeting, it appears as if Harry merely wants to get intimate with Adam spurred by Dutch courage and albeit the mutual attraction, Adam declines the proposition and shuts the door right in front of Harry’s face. It is a quite rational thing to do at first glance. Who will invite a total stranger in just like that? But when we think of it with hindsight, it is actually Harry in his most vulnerable moment, it is him sending his SOS signal, craving for some human company to go through a tough and eventually fateful night. But Adam is so dyed-in-the-wool in his secluded existence, he is incapable of reading Harry’s signal, and after that, there is little he can do. This is Adam’s ultimate loss, insularity is an easy defense mechanism and ALL OF US STRANGERS makes a cogent case to urge us to be more empathetic and perceptive, and to reach out to those who are suffering in this broken world.

Adam’s shucking off this insularity is eventuated through a series of fantasticated encounters with his parents. During which Adam finally can come out to them and get the genuine reactions from both, also the knot of father-son miscommunication is disentangled and ends up with a heartwarming hug. Adam can finally say farewell to them knowing that they are proud of him in spite of everything, attaining that elusive closure and poised to move on from the stasis that has ensnared him for far too long.

To watch a grown-up Adam talking with his parents who are more or less around the same age as him is an immensely touching and uncanny experience, and Scott achieves the almost impossible task to be present as both an adult and a 12-year-old in the same scene. In those familiar but also strange tête-à-têtes, sleeping on the same bed, Adam is both a boy who relives the cherished company of his parents and dreads the inevitable, and an adult son must gingerly come clean to them, studies their reactions to seek any form of approval, also updates them with a changed worldview and concocts white lies about their accident and the aftermath. Scott’s performance is superlative, not only can he turn up the emotional volume at the drop of a hat (which is always a marvel to behold with one’s own eyes), but out of a fairly sketchy character, he succeeds in registering Adam’s interiority with profound nuances and delicacy, he becomes a specimen of an audience’s own projection, a human without specificities, a lost soul gets a second chance to reconnect with the world, his every reaction and emotion is ours too.

To amp up the sense of solitude, the film has restricted the main cast to four with almost no marginal characters. Mescal has the saddest face of a young man, his Harry crops up like a beam of sun ray, but winds up as the most harrowing meteor ever crosses the firmament. As Adam’s unnamed parents, both Foy and Bell are phenomenal with warmth, candidness and unalloyed affection while betraying not an ounce of hokeyness or pretension (the former gains a slight edge with her additional maternal prickliness). It is difficult to play ordinary folks whose biggest asset is decency, yet, somehow, they comprise an endearing triad with Scott, a wholesome nuclear unit that is the fabric of our entire society.

Culminating in that star-studded, flawlessly materialized closing shot that leavens the plaintive story with a cosmic signification, ALL OF US STRANGERS is ultimately a therapeutic introspection about loss. Congratulations are in order to Haigh for balancing out that fine line between personal and universal in his storytelling and to Scott for his career-best achievement, a new entry in the queer cinema canon is officially here to stay.

referential entries: Haigh’s 45 YEARS (2015, 8.0/10), WEEKEND (2011, 8.1/10); Lucio Castro’s END OF THE CENTURY (2019, 7.8/10); David Lowery’s A GHOST STORY (2017, 7.0/10).