TELLURIDE – There is quiet tension bubbling underneath Andrew Haigh’s latest endeavor. An often sublime drama that features a unique reunion between a son and his parents and a transformative, passionate romance. Both events are unexpected and both have an air of mystery surrounding them. Not everything is what it seems, but it may not matter as much as the themes and performances populating “All of Us Strangers,” which debuted this evening at the 2023 Telluride Film Festival.
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In some respects, “All of Us” feels like an echo of Haigh’s 2011 breakout, “Weekend,” an understated romance where a casual hookup between two men sparks a passionate 72-hour affair. At the center of that film was Glenn, a thirtysomething Brit still privately uncomfortable with his gay identity. A man who still hasn’t come out to his parents and has sworn off the potential agony of relationships. Based on Taichi Yamada’s 1987 novel “Strangers” (and a closer adaptation in some ways than you might believe), the focal point of Haigh’s latest artistic endeavor is Adam (Andrew Scott), a fortysomething man living an isolated life in a barely occupied apartment tower in a newly developed area of London. Unlike Glenn, he’s someone who never had the chance to come out to his parents. They were killed in a car accident when he was only 12 years old. Adam is “out,” appears to have had gay friends at one time (or so we are led to assume), but is now somehow alone. And, more dishearteningly, he admittedly has a close-fisted tightness in his chest that he can’t seem to shake. An emotional block that has also kept him from the potential heartache of prospective lovers. And like Glenn, his world completely changes over the course of just a few days.
Adam’s solitary existence is first disrupted when one of his only neighbors, Harry (Paul Mescal), shows up intoxicated at his door. The brazenly queer and flirty younger man has seen Adam peeking at him through their almost floor-to-ceiling windows (quite gorgeous, frankly) and has finally gotten up the courage to proposition himself. Despite Harry’s charismatic smile, Adam is unprepared for such an adventure and sheepishly turns him down.
A working screenwriter who “sometimes” does TV scripts to pay the bills (shade Mr. Haigh, shade), Adam’s days find him sitting in front of his laptop trying to push past a current case of writer’s block. Looking for inspiration, he takes a day trip to the suburb where he spent his childhood. He walks by the now-empty house he lived in as a kid and ends up at the edge of a nearby field of uncut grass. It’s twilight. It’s peaceful. He takes a deep breath. And then, like magic (or not), he senses someone is mere yards behind him. He turns around to see his father (Jamie Bell) casually standing there with a bag of groceries in his arms. After Dad beckons him to follow, they return to the house where his Mum (Claire Foy) is there to greet him. It’s his parents, exactly as he remembers them before their deaths over 30 years prior. Is this a dream? A hallucination? He doesn’t know. He simply goes with it.
Over the course of the next few weeks, he returns again and again to reconnect with the parents he never really knew. Mum and Dad both know they shouldn’t be here. They know they have passed and repeatedly warn their son whatever this is won’t last. Adam ignores them wondering why it can’t. Why does it have to end?
While Adam continues to answer their questions back “home” about his life he finally connects with Harry in the tower. A wall comes down and he lets himself explore an intimacy he admits he hasn’t experienced in some time (a scene absolutely worthy of an “oh me, oh my” reaction). There is a genuine spark with Harry and for a brief moment, he’s seemingly at peace. Almost.
We’re not a psychologist and we won’t pretend to be one in the context of this review, but despite the fantastical return of his parents and a passionate connection with Harry, Adam is still a man with obvious pain. The trauma of his parents’ deaths followed him for decades. And real-world events only added to his hidden anguish. At one point he tells Harry he didn’t engage in penetrative sex for a good portion of his life over fears of what he might catch (a truth unspoken for many men his age and older). And when his mother wonders if he’d want kids in this freer future, a world she never considered “homosexuals” could have the right to marry, he admits he hadn’t really given it much thought. He’d almost subconsciously shut down that inherent, intimate aspect of his life. It was never meant for him.
Despite the advent of more gay or LGBTQ-themed content this century (something Haigh contributed to with the landmark HBO series “Looking”), Adam’s character seems unexpectedly fresh and new. He’s not a joyous figure, but a gay man at this age, in this modern era, with these fears, these repressed emotions, this inherent loneliness is more common than many in his own community would acknowledge. And he’s certainly not a usual figure in a filmed context. The fact Adam doesn’t even have the benefit of a “chosen family,” at least one accessible to him, isn’t tragic, it’s actually a reality for many, whether queer or not. In fact, Haight’s ability to organically fashion this heartbreaking narrative to Yamada’s work without straying from its initial themes is all sorts of incredible. It’s not an easy proposition for any filmmaker to pull off.
We’ve admittedly only seen a fraction of Scott’s performances in the U.K. (he has a long list of television and stage credits), but we don’t recall him crafting a performance as subdued and layered as Adam before (or at least in this context). It’s genuinely impressive. Mescal, on the other hand, gives the gays everything they want projecting Harry as a sly, sexy, and almost dotting lover. In many ways he transforms Harry into the perfect match Adam didn’t know he needed. Mescal is so magnetic that Scott probably deserves even more credit for not fading opposite his inherent star power.
Foy and Bell, on the other hand, have the unusual proposition of playing characters their age who are also the parents of an actor slightly older than themselves. The weight of making this fantastical narrative believable and somehow grounded at the same time is also as much in their hands as Haigh’s. They pull it off beautifully. Foy also has a fantastic moment as a mother coming to terms with the realization her son wasn’t who he thought he was while Bell plays the flipside in a manner a child could only dream of.
Despite the actor’s contributions, this is still the work of a confident auteur. Haigh has many skills as a director and letting the action play out in an almost passive manner (emphasis on “almost”) is one of them. That may sound like a criticism, but his chosen aesthetic is actually a super challenging tone to pull off. He lets his actors inhabit their scenes without a hint of fluff or circumstance while skillfully keeping his audience captivated to the screen (granted, he does seem to be the only modern movie maker who can accurately capture the energy of a crowded dancefloor).
In theory, the end result wants to prompt a genuine emotional reaction (there is even a nostalgic music cue for the moment). And while we have been known to shed many tears in the confines of a theater, that didn’t happen with “All of Us.” But we’d be reminiscent to not admit this is the sort of movie that’s hard to shake. We haven’t been able to stop thinking about it since. Considering how rare that is, maybe that’s just as gracious a compliment as admitting to bawling while the credits roll. Ponder.
Oh, and yes, there is a surprise. And, yes, you may figure it out before it’s revealed. But for the enjoyment of everyone else, we suggest you keep it to yourself. We know you can do it. For Mum, at least. [B+]
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