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Andrew Scott (left) and Paul Mescal in the movie “All of Us Strangers.” (Parisa Taghizadeh/Searchlight Pictures/TNS)
All of Us Strangers is a perfect way to kick off 2024. Not because it’s particularly seasonal (though one key scene takes place around Christmas time), but simply because it’s so beautifully acted and tenderly observed. Writer/director Andrew Haig’s drama landed on numerous top 10 lists of 2023. I always miss two or three of her movies during the holiday season. The benefit of “All of Us Strangers” being released in limited theaters is that it’s an opportunity to get the year off to a good start.
We meet Adam, played by Andrew Scott, alone in a new London skyscraper, with a particularly upbeat atmosphere among the residents. He is a writer, accustomed to solitude, accustomed to living a careful life mainly in his imagination.
Recently he had begun writing a script about the parents played by Claire Foy and Jamie Bell in Haig’s film, and an early close-up of a document on Adam’s laptop reads: EXT. (Exterior) Suburban House 1987 As you’ll soon discover, the year 1987 forever changed then-12-year-old Adam’s life.
Adam hears a knock at his apartment. It’s Harry, another man living in the building, drunk and unoccupied. They watched each other from a distance, but never spoke. Harry, played by Paul Mescal, tries to woo Adam (who is also gay), but Adam politely declines. In a more low-key situation, they meet up some time later after some awkward small talk in an elevator. And after an indefinite and indeterminate day and night, their story becomes the love story of “All of Us Strangers.”
If the film were about that story alone, it would be a fitting conclusion to Haig’s excellent second feature, “Weekend.” But it’s bigger and more mysterious than that. As Adam reveals details about his rocky past relationship with his parents, who we learn early on (not a spoiler) that his parents died in a car accident, Harry becomes his lover and confidant. It becomes an existence with hidden romantic potential.
Many times in All of Us Strangers, Adam revisits the house where he grew up on the train. It is the suburban house mentioned in his script, in Dorking, 34 miles south of London. What he discovered there is inexplicable. His parents still live there, just as they did in 1987. This is what Adam studied in a supernatural form. He’s not just revisiting a place, he’s communicating with the memory of his lost parents. There were many things between Adam and his parents that were never said when they were together. As a child, Adam always knew he was gay and was bullied for being sensitive, different, and “creative.” It was all euphemisms and condescending slang for homosexuals. Did his parents know what he was going through? Would they have accepted him for who he was during the AIDS epidemic? What will they think of him now that he is an adult and dealing with so many losses and deeply buried emotions in his childhood?
![people surrounding the christmas tree](https://i0.wp.com/www.twincities.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/STP-Z-STRANGERS-01.jpg?fit=620%2C9999px&ssl=1)
There are several different ways to experience All of Us Strangers. It can be seen as something like a fluid fantasy on the road, and a conversation that wasn’t taken, which is heartbreaking. It can also be seen as an exercise in subtle visual excellence. Haig is certainly a rare writer-director, equally skilled on paper and behind the camera. As Adam descends into a wistful nostalgia for what he has lost, the film becomes almost liquid, drifting in and out of dreamscape and reality. (Cinematographer Jamie D. Ramsay shot the film on 35mm film, perfect for exquisite crossfades and breaking Haig’s favor.) Haig used London as his boyhood home in the film. He used his childhood home in the southern Croydon area and color-coded it to make it more discreet. A scene that reflects Adam’s mental state.
Early on, Adam tells Harry that Dorking is “not suitable for people like me.” Harry, who is several decades younger (at least in terms of Scott and Mescal’s age), can relate, but he grew up in a less-policed era and the height of the AIDS epidemic. Haig gave his personal response in the best possible way to his work, which is based on Taichi Yamada’s Japanese novel The Strangers, which is built around a heterosexual scenario. Haig’s adaptation is a completely original creation, and although the last few minutes eschew sentimentality, it is truthful and touching along the way.
Like all of his best work before All of Us Strangers, from Weekend to 45 Years to Lean on Pete, Haig’s latest work brings out the best in his cast. It’s being pulled out. Scott richly conveys a deeply affecting sense of sadness and determination. Mescal matches his work with charismatic and vivid depictions of slightly unruly lost children. The scenes between Bell and Foy, who play 1987-era Adam’s parents, leave them wondering and ruminating about all the untold things of their childhood, whether or not their stories resemble Adam’s. Enough to shed a tear for all the people around the world who are.
We will keep those things with us no matter how long we live. One of our greatest screenwriters and directors, Haig took his familiar emotions and oft-explored ideas in a uniquely spectral direction with “All of Us Strangers.” Although fundamentally sad, it’s an exciting way to start a new movie year.
“We are all strangers”
3.5 stars (out of 4 stars)
MPA rating: R (sexual content, drug use, and some language)
Execution time: 1:45
How to watch: Currently showing in theaters
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