September 1, 2023
Review Roundup: 'All of Us Strangers' Packs Huge Emotional Wallop After Telluride Premiere
READ TIME: 7 MIN.
"Prepare to be wrecked," writes David Rooney in the Hollywood Reporter about Andrew Haigh's latest film "All of Us Strangers" that premiered at the Telluride Film Festival on Thursday. Rooney's quote is one of the dozen-or-so positive reviews of British filmmaker Haigh's latest. In 2011, Haigh made his writing/directorial debut with "Weekend" which also received a rapturous response upon release.
His new film is adapted from the 1987 novel "Strangers" by Taichi Yamada, with the film's screenplay written by Haigh. The film stars Andrew Scott, Paul Mescal, Claire Foy, and Jamie Bell. The novel was previously adapted in 1988 as "The Discarnates" directed by Nobuhiko Obayashi.
In the film Scott plays Adam, a screenwriter living in London, who meets Harry (Mescal), a mysterious neighbor. As the story unfolds, Adam returns to his childhood home to discover his parents (Foy and Bell), believed dead, are alive and haven't aged in 30 years.
The film hit a chord with the early critics, receiving a coveted 100% on Rotten Tomatoes with eight positive reviews, seven of which were from "Top Critics." Here is a sample:
Hollywood Reporter, David Rooney
"A quasi-memory film with the out-of-body feel of a waking dream, 'All of Us Strangers' is in some ways a companion piece to Andrew Haigh's stunning 2011 breakthrough, "Weekend". But it also feels like something new, strange and soul-stirring that the director has been working toward his entire career..."
"The Searchlight release, opening Dec. 22 after screenings at the Telluride and New York film festivals, is both specific to Haigh's life and relatable enough to connect with anyone who has experienced the comforts and sorrows of both familial and romantic love..."
"The warm, sexy chemistry between Scott and Mescal is a key factor, with the latter bringing soulfulness as well as humor and a sense of fun to his character, whose supportive presence in Adam's life belies Harry's own damage."
"'All of Us Strangers' has qualities that have always been there in Haigh's work – a keen perceptiveness about human nature, desire, fear, loss and the restorative power of connection. Here, those aspects come together in his most uniquely personal film since 'Weekend,' a feeling perhaps fortified by the knowledge that scenes with Adam's parents were shot in the director's own childhood home. The movie also makes eloquent points about the refuge of imagination, even if it's temporary."
Variety, Peter Debruge
"While it unfolds in a hazy dream state rooted in Adam's loneliness and the emotional suspension that has blocked him from moving forward, it's by no means a downer. It's a thing of beauty, heartfelt and unforgettable..."
"Loosely inspired by Japanese writer Taichi Yamada's 1987 novel 'Strangers,' Haigh's low-key English-language adaptation is a curious kind of ghost story, at once incredibly tender and profoundly devastating as it slowly reveals its secrets. Best known as the creator of HBO's landmark LGBT series 'Looking,' Haigh takes the hetero source material and reconfigures it around his unapologetically gay protagonist, downplaying the supernatural elements while adding a uniquely queer emotional core..."
"Working with a new team of collaborators (key among them DP Jamie Ramsay and composer Emilie Levienaise-Farrouch, both veterans of last year's 'Living'), Haigh strikes a dreamy liminal tone. 'All of Us Strangers' opens with Adam's face reflected in his apartment window, a haunting motif that continues till the end. Channeling a certain A24-like vibe, the film shares the memory-puzzle aspect of 'Aftersun' in particular, so it's fitting that Haigh cast Mescal, who played the narrator's father in that film. The entire journey is not based in logic so much as a kind of emotional intuition, and as such, no two viewers will experience it the same way. What strikes some as manipulative will crack open others, as the film offers a kind of connection that's all too rare, and maybe even impossible."
Little White Lies, Hannah Strong
"A chance encounter with his mysterious, charming downstairs neighbour Harry (Paul Mescal), seemingly the only other resident in the building, invites the possibility of romance into Adam's life after years of solitude, and with it comes a strange new complication. When he returns to his childhood home in search of inspiration, Adam finds his parents exactly as they were before they died. His affable father (Jamie Bell) and doting mother (Claire Foy) greet him warmly, eager to catch up..."
"The chemistry between Scott and Mescal in their scenes is atomic; where the older is shy and cagey, Harry is impossibly worldly, and just a little bit heartbreaking as he deflects by bringing Adam out of his shell. There's something desperately sad in Mescal's gaze that only begins to decode as the film slips into its devastating final act, while Scott's delicacy is worlds away from the more bombastic performances he delivered in Sherlock or 'Fleabag' – or even in his much-lauded Almeida production of 'Hamlet.'..."
"But so too does Haigh capture the catharsis offered by processing one's pain, and learning to see your loved ones – particularly your parents – as human beings, flawed and fallible like anyone else. Such a painful excavation is profoundly moving and often wrenching, but also tentatively hopeful, suggesting peace only comes from learning to live with the melancholy of missing someone, and to embrace connection where you find it. It's a ghost story, but it's a love story too. One that will break your heart."
The Guardian, Peter Bradshaw
(Five Stars out of five).
"Andrew Haigh's mysterious, beautiful and sentimental film is a fantasy-supernatural romance about loneliness and love. It concerns the climacteric of middle age when you realise you are probably nearer to death than birth, there is no guarantee that you will live your life inside a relationship and your parents were ordinary, vulnerable people – just like you..."
"...Opinions may be divided over the film's final scene, whether it takes this drama too far into another (familiar) genre and whether the scenes in which we've made such a tearful emotional investment have merely been misdirection. But what tremendous performances from all four; what style Haigh brings to this movie, fusing the themes of romantic relationships and intergenerational relationships of his previous movies 'Weekend' and '45 Years.'"
"It's a heartstopping moment when Adam walks broodingly through a park and sees, in the distance, another man who briefly gestures with his head towards a thicket of trees; Adam follows, but the scene isn't what we think. The film is an enormously satisfying and affecting experience."
IndieWire, David Ehrlich
"God bless British Andrew Haigh, whose best films – 'Weekend,' '45 Years,' and now the quietly shattering 'All of Us Strangers' – are the rare work of a modern director who knows how to get out of their own way. Haigh's simple but penetrating dramas couldn't be more specific in how they depict the strangeness of intimacy and the intimacy of strangeness, and yet they're also palpably unfilled in a way, like a half-empty room that someone you were looking for just left. In that light, it should come as little surprise that Haigh is so well-suited to an ineffably personal ghost story about the absences that can shape our entire lives if we let them..."
"The film's hushed modesty allows Haigh to create an ethereal atmosphere so cold and sterile that Adam and Harry might as well be the last two men on Earth; the fire between them is kindled with such care that it seems like the entire world might go dark if it went out. That heightened focus draws our eye to every muscle of Scott's crushingly gentle smile, as we search for a lifetime of unspoken feeling in each little twitch of his lips. Adam's mom confesses that she never knew what her son was thinking or why he would run away from home, and so Haigh entreats us to seek the answers for her..."
"And Haigh, whose less is more approach has never been more effective than it is here, always makes sure to leave room in the frame for us to bring our own hurt to the table, whatever form it might take. 'I know how easy it can be to stop caring about yourself,' Harry tells Adam at one point. 'All of Us Strangers' does too, and it never shies away from how hard it can be to start again, especially once Harry begins to struggle with his own advice. But even this bittersweet film's most soul-flattening moments find something transcendent in the simple fact that none of us is ever truly alone so long as we still have our ghosts for company."
