You know, I think the premise for this one, is that a guy shows up at his old childhood home, and is welcomed inside by friendly impressions of his parents, when they would’ve been around his age, and it all sounds kind’ve hokey. Or, if done well, it could be an absolute tearjerker!! Let’s face it, nearly every movie starts out with a premise that has the potential to be hokey, but it’s the earnestness and humanity put into it that make a good movie investing. Time to stop judging a movie by its trailer, and let’s see All of Us Strangers.
Directed by Andrew Haigh, the premise is exactly so, and Adam (Andrew Scott) is a lonely man working on a screenplay, pulling from his childhood, which prompts this bizarre encounter. Adam also meets Harry (Paul Mescal) in his building, and the pair share personal experiences through an impromptu sexual relationship as well. All of Us Strangers is a quiet movie, and Haigh has a flare for sensuality; not quite as grandly as Luca Guadagnino, who I’d fame for his expertise, but a credit to this movie is its attention to detail, in close-ups, or focus on the small touches that help communicate the emotional heights of this languid story.
It’s fantastic to see Claire Foy in a softer role, as Adam’s mother – I mainly know her for hardened characters in The Girl in the Spider’s Web and Women Talking, but here she is all motherly and warm, showing another empathetic side to her, at least to me. It was surreal to see Jamie Bell as a plodding father too, when he has been playing vibrant young men well into his thirties, and I was here for both of them.
I got completely onboard with what I thought this movie was doing, and I think we’ve all had those conversations in our head where we’ve yearned to have said something different, or wished we could’ve said something more, to the people of our past lives, and this movie is an extrapolation of that. Adam is a crushed soul having lost his parents at a young age, wondering what they would’ve been like in his adult years, and how they might’ve been supportive, and how they would’ve acted to know the man that Adam has become. The movie admittedly leans a lot on Adam being gay, which is clearly a large component of who Adam is, coming under the wider umbrella of Adam relaying how his whole life has transpired to his embracing parents. In the kitchen is an intrinsic scene, where Adam is proud to tell his mother who he is, all the while prickled by her lasting shock, and not wanting to disappoint a women that isn’t even there at the same time. Then the bed scene is the highlight of the movie, with Adam and his nameless mother detailing how a day in their imaginary lives at Disneyland would’ve gone, and it’s really strong stuff.
I kept waiting for the hammer to drop – we’re in uncanny valley after all, and there’s an eeriness that permeates most of this movie, dealing in the spirit realm, although all appears incredibly comforting. But there’s always a chance for the tables to turn; and eventually they do, but I didn’t need it, as I was happy thinking of the movie’s surreal events as insular therapeutic moments taking place inside Adam’s head and heart, instead of being made to wonder on top of that if he’s actually going crazy.
And then, I actively hated the ending. I would’ve had it that Adam’s parents welcome Harry and Adam into the house, and had the movie end there, symbolizing how Adam has now let another person into his heart, where his parents will always be. We know that what is going on here is all fantasy, that people cannot have meaningful tangible conversations with their parents after death, so why not double-down on the premise and deliver on some memorable movie magic? But I suppose I would be making a different movie, because instead, the movie has us sit through a teary goodbye, a little adolescently handled and repetitive for my taste, and then channels The Sixth Sense for a twist I could’ve left behind. I had been thinking that Harry was almost too good to be true, after he arrives drunk on the doorstep the first night we meet him, but then is completely caring and compassionate to Adam’s needs thereafter, and it turns out I had a whiff of something. That now makes three high-concept characters that I know Paul Mescal for playing, and luckily Aftersun worked (although more so for others than it did myself) because Foe and All of Us Strangers have been awful. It’s like All of Us Strangers didn’t know what it had, and even ends with a puerile song choice in Frankie Goes to Hollywood’s ‘The Power of Love’, as if we hadn’t all figured out that love was a pretty important and desired component of life, well before this movie ever started.
At its best, All of Us Strangers offers great perspective, on how we all take different paths to get here, dealing with personalised traumas, and loss. I’m fortunate enough to spend a lot of quality time with my parents, and even I worry that a day will come where it won’t have been enough – I couldn’t imagine seeing this movie with a precise emotional experience as raw as what is depicted here, but I’d hope it would be somewhat cathartic. I entered the cinema today expecting to count the tears to trickle down my face, and while that never happened, I was invested in the emotional rigmarole for the first two thirds of the movie. But that final third really harshed my mellow, and must tank my final score dreadfully. If I had to consolidate what does happen in All of Us Strangers, and not what I wanted to happen, then I still think it’s too much. This movie goes from being a thought experiment about Adam coming to terms with the loss of his parents, to Adam being a ghost-whisperer for the dead 🙄
2.5
Leave a Reply