All of Us Strangers: Souls Longing for the Impossible

One night in his near-empty tower block in contemporary London, Adam (Andrew Scott) has a chance encounter with a mysterious neighbor Harry (Paul Mescal), which punctures the rhythm of his everyday life. As a relationship develops between them, Adam is preoccupied with memories of the past and finds himself drawn back to the suburban town where he grew up, and the childhood home where his parents (Claire Foy and Jamie Bell), appear to be living, just as they were on the day they died, 30 years before.

REVIEW:

For most of All of Us Strangers, a gay love drama about forgiveness and moving on, it’s hard to determine whether what is happening is a ghost story or the draft of a screenplay being written in the writer’s imagination. There are dead parents that come in and out at the click of the keyboards, but there is also the big empty apartment building with only two occupants, Harry (Paul Mescal) and Adam (Andrew Scott) conduct their love affair and love interrogations.

Adam had the usual tragic childhood of a writer with parents who died in a car crash when he was twelve. There are lots of unresolved issues regarding mom and dad: never saying goodbye or telling them he was gay. These issues get resolved in time jumping scenes that are moving and yet are a little too neat and perfect. The acceptance of his gay identity is resolved quickly, sympathetically, acceptingly without the usual coming out drama. He was bullied as a child and apartness and loneliness is his shield.

All of Us Strangers was adapted from the minimalist novel by Taichi Yamada by writer and director Andrew Haigh. The story is basically the same except the gender identifications are flipped to accommodate a gay pint of view. It’s also less tragic and existential.

Harry and Adam are fellow estranged souls. Harry is more extroverted and seems to be in more psychological and emotional pain. Eventually the scabs of each other are peeled back and their relationship develops a deep dimension. The specters of his parents (Claire Foy and Jamie Bell) become Adam’s confidante, therapist and guideposts. At the appropriate time, when he and they feel they are ready to move on, they bow out of his life so can focus on exploring a life with Harry.

Haigh layers on a lyrical gloss to emphasize both the dreamlike and hallucinatory state of the two falling in love. There is a heaven being played out but whether it’s metaphysical or emotional is left vague until the devastating yet utterly fulfilling ending. All of Us Strangers is a movie that want the audience to feel its way through it, just let it roll over them and surrender to it entirely.

Scott makes the audience know Adam’s repressed pain. It can be seen in his eyes. Scott needs another actor like Mescal to keep it emotionally real. The two together echo souls looking for what they once were impossible connections. The whole experience is revelatory.

All of Us Strangers is a prism through which loneliness and its manifestations are refracted. It allows the should haves of life to become a resolved emotional reality. It allows the two souls here to achieve their perfection by resolving their past, present and future. How it’s the life work of every human to move from the estrangements and strangeness of family, our lives, our society, our bodies to something approaching the comfortable and familiar that is embracing love.