Writer-director Andrew Haigh returns to the silver screen with All of Us Strangers, a loose adaptation of Taichi Yamada's Strangers. When the lonely Adam meets a mysterious stranger, Harry, who lives in the same empty block of flats, he finds himself propelled towards a romance he never saw possible for himself. This chance encounter comes as Adam finds himself revisiting his family, who died when he was a young boy. Andrew Scott leads with the supporting cast rounded out by Paul Mescal, Claire Foy and Jamie Bell.
Every now and then, a film touches your soul on such a profound level that you want to scream about its brilliance from the rooftops. A beautiful, soul-stirring and haunting examination of queer loneliness, grief, longing and memory, All of Us Strangers is a profoundly moving and evocative picture that thrives in its focus on a homosexual experience. A film of two beautifully complementary halves, Strangers is a remarkably delicate, strangely straightforward yet slightly surreal contemplation of holding on, letting go and healing the inner child.
With direction both elegant and startling - shockingly tender in its most intimate moments of connection and lust, yet hard-hitting and emotionally gutting as it enters its most devastating territory - Andrew Haigh has crafted an achingly brilliant piece of cinema that could melt the iciest of hearts. Despite the ghostly presence and time-fracturing back-and-forth, a hauntingly authentic core to All of Us Strangers ensures it is continually grounded in the purest human emotion, leading to a cinematic experience that somehow feels like a voyage into our souls. Never tempted to seek out ostentatious filmmaking practices or overly grandiose techniques, Haigh remains wholly focused on the wider picture and the picture soars as a result.
While the original novel provides sturdy foundations on which he can build, Haigh delivers a screenplay of such emotional depth and focus to ruminate upon. Loneliness is a theme frequently found within queer cinema, explored here in such a fascinating way by contrasting views of the past with behaviours of the present in a way that feels revelatory and insightful; aching with the pain of a generation required to suppress to survive, exploring the indelible scars left by words and how our loved ones can be implicit in such lasting damage, Strangers remarkable way of tacking such conflicting, powerful emotions is put to great use, using its conceit of ghosts in a miraculously healing way. Along with its intelligent, beautifully reflective way of exploring grief, Strangers reflectively tight focus means its themes are explored with the profundity and clarity they deserve.
To describe Andrew Scott's performance in All Of Us Strangers as one of the greatest acting performances in recent memory would be an understatement. A life-changing and career-defining turn aching with a vulnerability that Scott portrays with an impossible magnetism, Scott's work is truly superlative. Here he plays a 40-something writer isolating his feelings as a result of grief and suppression, and a preteen boy hiding his true self and desperate to feel his parent’s arms around him one last time. It would take an extraordinarily tight performer to balance those roles with the subtlety and complexity needed to convince, and Scott utterly excels with a leading turn unparalleled in its emotional depth and fortitude.
Paul Mescal emotes like few others, an emotionally charged performance of a man fighting his own demons while trying to support someone else with theirs. As with his sensational Aftersun performance, Mescal conveys so much emotion with the slightest of mannerisms, his eyes signalling so much hurt and sensitivity yet containing an elusive quality we cannot help but be compelled towards. He's wonderful opposite Scott, their chemistry irresistible, with the pair delivering one of the most multi-faceted on-screen relationships in some time. Similarly, Jamie Bell takes on the role of Adam's father and earns some of the most heartwarming moments of the piece, characterised by the stiff upper lip that defined men of the era, but uncovering a soft heart that provides a refreshingly open-minded portrayal of a father who simply wants the best for his son.
Of the supporting cast, however, Claire Foy shines the brightest. Exquisite as Adam’s mother, Foy delivers a complicated performance brimming with the mindset of a period and riddled with a deep sadness that is performed to absolute perfection. While a knowingness of their fates could have become one-note and inevitable, the journey becomes so much more fulfilling because of the layers to Foy and Scott's relationship. In the single most gut-wrenching sequence of the film, as Foy sings to Scott a song that defined his childhood, it feels like the film stops still in its tracks: "Maybe I didn't hold you all those lonely, lonely times/And I guess I never told you, I'm so happy that you're mine". It is in that stillness, and many of the silences that follow, that Foy's performance comes to life, an outstanding, pivotal performance that demonstrates the importance of brilliant supporting turns.
All of Us Strangers begins as an open wound, one the rest of the film seeks to tend to and allow to heal; by the time we reach its close, as devastated as we are, with the pain lingering on, it feels like our souls have been changed by this rather transformative piece. Character-led and theme-heavy, Strangers may not be embraced as enthusiastically by those who prefer a stronger sense of plot to propel its narrative forward - but for those for resonate with the themes, particularly, as suspected given the features’ unwavering focus on a queer experience, an LGBTQ+ audience, will find it hard not to be caught up in the emotional current of Strangers. A rare cinematic experience, All of Us Strangers is a dreamscape that poignantly contemplates some of the hardest-hitting themes while boasting one of the finest British ensembles put to film in some time, led by Andrew Scott's searing work.