All of Us Strangers

Searchlight Pictures

Reviewed for FilmFactual by Abe Friedtanzer

Director: Andrew Haigh

Writer: Andrew Haigh

Cast: Andrew Scott, Paul Mescal, Jamie Bell, Claire Foy

Screened at: TCL Chinese Theatres, LA, 10/28/23

Opens: December 22^nd, 2023

The pain of loss can be amplified exponentially by what life events and potential relationships it could have affected. It’s never possible to know how things might have turned out or been different if someone’s life hadn’t been cut short, but that doesn’t stop people from speculating. All of Us Strangers posits a way for one man to reconnect with two people who left him far too soon as he struggles to make his first real bond with a living person who may be just as lonely as he is.

Adam (Andrew Scott) lives an isolated existence, and his one point of connection is Harry (Paul Mescal), the attractive man who lives in his apartment complex. When Harry notices Paul staring up at him in his window during a fire alarm, he comes by and the two slowly build a relationship. At the same time, Adam seems stuck in his past, returning to his childhood home only to be greeted by his parents (Jamie Bell and Claire Foy), who look the same as they did when they died thirty years earlier in a car crash and very eager to get to know the man their son has become.

Whether or not what Adam experiences with his parents is real isn’t all that relevant to the emotional impact of this movie. There’s something strange about the way in which they interact, as if they sort of know him but don’t entirely, and they mostly don’t acknowledge the fact that he’s older than they are. Yet there’s an incredible warmth and sense of nostalgia that comes with Adam reconnecting with the people who raised him who he desperately wants to know, and it’s not all rosy, namely his mother’s flummoxed reaction to him telling her that he’s gay.

Director Andrew Haigh has probed the longevity of relationships before in films like 45 Years, and his latest, which is based on Taichi Yamada’s Japanese novel Strangers, delves deep into what’s behind dynamics that may not be all that typical. It’s heartbreaking to see Adam experience the affirmation and pride he wishes he would have grown up with from his parents, and to think of how they never got to really have these moments when they were alive. Adam is clearly traumatized from how they died – in a violent car crash – and hasn’t gotten over the viciousness of that loss, as he recounts it all to Harry.

All of Us Strangers features a quartet of magnificent performances. Scott, who might be best known to American audiences for playing the Hot Priest in Fleabag, conveys the energetic childishness that still fills Adam as he gains this coveted opportunity. He balances the playful scenes that find him wearing pajamas and climbing into bed with his parents with the deep devastation he carries from having grown up alone. Mescal is warm and trusting as Harry pushes Paul to open up. Bell and Foy paint their characters as loving yet imperfect, aware that they may have flaws but fully ready to embrace the son they wish they could have known.

The manner in which Paul jumps between this inexplicable reunion with his parents and his burgeoning romantic relationship makes for a dizzying, dreamlike experience, but one that feels incredibly real. The moments where Paul is with his parents feel as if they must be happening, whereas he begins the doubt the authenticity of this new romance that seems realer. For anyone who has ever lost someone close to them, All of Us Strangers will be a difficult but rewarding watch, a tender, vulnerable glimpse into the long-pondered hopes of something that so many surely hope could happen to them, even just for a short time.

105 minutes

Story – A-

Acting – A-

Technical – B+

Overall – A-