All My Strangers movie review

The line between “really” and “only in a dream” is thin in Adam’s life. An old bachelor of about forty lives as lonely as if he were not even a part of this world. In the unobtrusive performance of the award-winning Irish actor Andrew Scott, known from the series Sherlock, Monster or Ripley, he resembles a ghost. This is not a completely misleading impression. The new film by the English director and screenwriter Andrew Haigh can be described as a ghost story with a small margin. The dead do not meet the living here to frighten them, but to reconcile.

The film, which with its meditative pace belongs more to the cinema, was inspired by a novel by the late Japanese writer Taichi Yamada last year. A literal translation would be Summer with Strangers, although it is better known under the English title Strangers. It was first published in 1987 and the year after that saw its first film adaptation at home.

Haigh’s grip loosened. He transferred the plot from Tokyo to present-day London and changed the protagonist’s sexual orientation. One night, an unknown woman knocks on the door of Adam’s apartment, but a man. Otherwise, the initial premise remains.

Scott’s Adam is a brooding screenwriter with creative block and apparently a midlife crisis. He had just moved into a new, largely empty London high-rise. It was as if only Harry lived in it, noticeably younger and more eager than the hero. He is played by another talented Irishman, Paul Mescal.

Harry would like to get to know the neighbor who shyly peeks in his window better. And so he visits him. Despite the obvious attraction between the two men, the first flirtation begins and ends at the door of Adam’s abode.

In order to better understand the reasons for a loner’s shyness and aloofness, we have to go back to childhood with him – just like in therapy. However, this does not only occur in a transferred meaning or in retrospects.

The day after meeting Harry, Adam leaves for the sleepy neighborhood on the outskirts of the city where he grew up. Probably because of the inspiration for the script. His parents welcome him to his childhood home. However, they are as old as they were in 1987, when he was 12 years old and last saw them. They died shortly afterwards in a car accident.

Adam’s mother and father, sensitively played by Claire Foy and Jamie Bell, are not surprised by their son’s return. As if they had been waiting for him the whole time. At the same time, they know nothing about his adult life. They only knew him as a boy. Therefore, they can’t wait for him to tell them how he is doing now, what he does, who he lives with. An unlikely but emotionally true reunion gives them the opportunity to tell each other everything there is no time left for.

An unfulfilled promise

Adam can finally confide in his parents that he is gay. They will not be surprised by this as much as by the fact that in the future it will no longer be a social stigma. In their time, during the reign of British Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, homosexuality was mainly a pretext for hate attacks and the spread of AIDS panic. Confronting how thinking about same-sex love has changed over the course of thirty years gives the film an unforced sense of humor.

Despite a few funny moments, All My Strangers remains a melancholic portrait of a lonely man, an orphan looking for a home. The later meetings with Harry also help us understand Adam in particular. The others just illuminate the different layers of his personality. Their own lives are secondary.

Adam, trying to fulfill his need for emotional, sexual or familial intimacy, is quite a supporting character in his own right. He understands well that the ability to be close to someone, to open up, can be double-edged. Although it breaks him out of isolation, it also opens old wounds.

Being gay no longer means living alone, Adam tells his mother. Rather, he convinces himself. It still bears the stamp of an era when homophobia was taken for granted and people with a different orientation were afraid to express their identity in any way. Therefore, they looked for love and support in the family. But this is where Adam lost.

Both of his traumas, from discrimination and the death of his parents, the narrative slowly interweaves with elements of the supernatural. Adam confides in Harry how the loss of those closest to him ended his childhood prematurely, while discussing his love life with his father and mother.

Despite the ubiquitous sadness, the shots are dominated by warm colors evoking a welcoming homely atmosphere. We thus perceive more clearly that Adam, alienated above all from himself, feels himself to be a stranger in every environment. The dreamlike visuals, along with the ethereal music of French pianist Emilie Levienaise-Farrouch, create the promise of some deeper mystery. But it remains unfulfilled. The touch of mysticism rather obscures the simplicity of the subject.

Scars from the past

Thanks to the soulful speech of the actors, the unhurried conversations seem civil and genuine, but the topics are soon exhausted and continue to be diluted. Narratives tending toward predictable catharsis don’t even present ideas that Andrew Haigh wouldn’t have expressed better in his previous films The Weekend and 45 Years or the Search series.

Again, it tells about characters who have unhealed scars from the past and do not live in accordance with their identity.

In addition to the spiritual motif and intergenerational dialogue, the novelty is especially the autobiographical dimension. It is no coincidence that Adam makes a living writing scripts and that the crew filmed the scenes with his parents in the house where Andrew Haigh grew up.

The almost depopulated world through which the uprooted hero wanders resembles blank pages waiting to be filled with words. Storytelling allows him to bridge the gaps, to bring back to life what has died out.

The vagueness of the secondary characters and the minimal connection of the fictional world to reality means that we have to guess a lot of things ourselves. Like in a dream. Therefore, a lot depends on the emotional investment of the viewer.

For some, Haigh’s fragile film about creating worlds in which everyone is welcome will remain equally remote and inaccessible throughout. He conquers others as soon as the hands of Adam and Harry, until then strangers, lightly touch for the first time.