Yahoo News ‘All Of Us Strangers’ Review: Paul Mescal & Andrew Scott Bring Conviction To Ghostly Story Of Love Lost And Found – Telluride Film Festival
In Taichi Yamada’s 1987 novel, All of Us Strangers was a ghost story of a son reconnecting with his long-dead parents while navigating romance in the current era. In adapting this weird story for the screen, writer-director Andrew Haigh made some changes, largely making the main character gay, not heterosexual, and letting the ghostly elements disappear into a feeling that this is all happening in the present day, even if son and parents are essentially the same age.
The film traverses two eras through the eyes of one man, Adam (Andrew Scott), a lonely 40ish screenwriter who is dealing with midlife issues when a man from the same apartment complex comes knocking one day. Harry (Paul Mescal) is a more freewheeling and sexually comfortable soul who is looking for a more conventional gay relationship when he is thrust into Adam’s complicated world. And for Adam, that means an odd re-introduction to his long-dead parents as he returns to his childhood home only to find Dad (Jamie Bell) and Mum (Claire Foy) mystically still there, now the same age as their son, living life like it was yesterday.
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And most interestingly, his dad accepts him as gay a lot more than Mum, who has issues with who Adam has become. You see, Adam as a very young boy was thrust into a truly nightmarish situation as he was orphaned when his parents were killed in a car crash. It was something he never really could deal with, but now a new person has come into his life who might make a difference.
To understand the true nature of Adam, Haigh crafted a brilliant scene in which he brings his unsuspecting new friend to his childhood home, where Adam reveals that he basically is living in an upside-down world in which his parents exist at the same age as their now-grown son, one where each confronts the other. It’s creepy, to be sure, and that certainly is the vibe Harry gets as he senses a bit of insanity. Haigh has done away with a lot of the more overt ghostly elements of the novel, changed the sexuality to bring it into a wholly different era of acceptance or not and made us question our own most intimate relationships on every level.
I am not at all sure this surreal story would work without actors of the caliber of Scott, known best as the sexy priest in Fleabag, and Mescal, who manages to project a healthy sexuality until thrust into a bit of a twilight zone. Both are superb but particularly Scott, who runs the gamut of emotions, as well as Foy, who simply inhabits a simple-minded mother who cannot accept the path that her son has chosen. That is just one of the reasons Haigh’s embrace of the original material, with significant changes to it, works so well.
All of Us Strangers asks a lot of questions, but the answers are not supplied easily. It is a challenging work as much of Haigh’s character-driven filmography including Weekend and 45 Years often is, but one that offers rich rewards if you sign on to it at all. It isn’t a mass-audience picture but one that adventurous audiences will accept with open arms.
Producers are Graham Broadbent, Sarah Harvey and Peter Czernin. Searchlight Pictures is the distributor for Disney for the film, which had its world premiere tonight at the Telluride Film Festival
Title: All of Us Strangers
Festival: Telluride Film Festival
Release date: December 22, 2023
Distributor: Searchlight Pictures
Director-screenwriter: Andrew Haigh
Cast: Andrew Scott, Paul Mescal, Jamie Bell, Claire Foy
Rating: R
Running time: 1 hr 45 min
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