Have you experienced a strange kind of delirium right before waking up from a dream? Especially when a dream is so lucid and visceral that it feels real. There’s even a stretch when one is simultaneously aware they’re dreaming, but also immersed in it like it’s really happening. A majority of Andrew Haigh’s All Of Us Strangers takes place in a delirium like this.
Adam (Andrew Scott), a lonely screenwriter residing in a ghostly apartment building in London where he’s one of the two occupants, spends a large part of his day gazing into a distance. He’s either staring at a blank word document on his laptop whose blinking cursor is measuring his time wasted, or mindlessly watching TV while chomping snacks. It doesn’t seem like he has friends (not nearby, at least) and he looks accustomed to microwave dinners and leftovers.
His solitude is threatened when his only neighbour Harry (Paul Mescal) shows up at the door, visibly inebriated and slightly on edge. He asks Adam how he copes with the silence of their area, without throwing himself off the balcony. When Harry invites himself in, Adam turns him away politely, almost instantly regretting it. Adam is battling writer’s block, and it seems like he’s also spent a lifetime running away from relationships. A spot decision to look at his childhood things (for inspiration) causes him to visit his parents’ home in the suburbs. While walking around in the neighbourhood, he bumps into his father (Jamie Bell), who invites him to come pay his mother (Claire Foy) a visit. What makes this meeting out of the ordinary is – Adam’s parents died when he was 12. “A car crash,” Adam tells Harry, the writer in him groaning at the cliche.
Haigh’s film is an adaptation of a 1987 Japanese novel by Taichi Yamada called Strangers. As much as it traverses the supernatural/magic-realism path, the grief and longing here is deeply personal. Having missed out on living his teenage years with his parents, Adam becomes a recurring visitor at his parents’ home. Note the obedience in Scott’s eyes, like he suddenly transformed into the shy, awkward adolescent they left behind.
He comes out to them as a gay man – resulting in two exceptionally touching scenes. Foy is exquisite as a mother grappling with memories of unconditional love for Adam’s 12-year-old version, her ‘80s mindset clashing with contemporary progressive values, while still concerned for her son’s loneliness and health. Her immediate question is around a disease she heard about on TV. Similarly, Bell is measured as the ‘alpha’ Dad, who smokes like it’s a fashion statement. But who also surprises his son with his generosity and introspection. It’s almost like Adam is concocting his own revisionist version of his growing up years, to overcome the pain of growing up isolated – which probably played a part in making him an even more isolated adult.
The more he reconnects with his parents, the more Adam finds himself opening up to Harry. Haigh’s film creates the perfect time capsule, as the 80s music becomes more and more prominent (Pet Shop Boys, Frankie Goes to Hollywood), almost as a way of indicating that telling his parents about his unspoken desires, might have freed him enough to profess being attracted to another man. Mescal, in another haunted performance (after last year’s Aftersun) of a man putting up the confident, assertive act while being completely shattered within, is a sight to behold. As Adam’s young lover, Harry brings a recklessness to the dynamic, which the former never allowed himself. Haigh films the sex scenes between Adam and Harry with a directness, as they explore each other’s bodies without the shame that’s been conditioned into them from a young age.
Haigh, who made the similarly devastating 45 Years (his economy could be mistaken for him being distant), brings his fleeting touch here too. He maintains the plot’s ambiguity till the end – is Adam’s writing assignment resulting in him visualising these hyper-real conversations? Is he ‘healing’ through these conversations? Or is he losing his mind? Will these visits take a toll on his relationship with Harry – who, in one scene, realises he will have to step up as the caregiver.
All of Us Strangers is brimming with great performances, but it’s best described as an Andrew Scott showcase. Best known for playing Moriarty in Benedict Cumberbatch’s Sherlock and a priest in Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s Fleabag – Scott brings his most pared-down version for the part of Adam. He almost physically contracts himself around his parents, and gets comfortable in his own body beside his lover. It’s the best example of body-language acting I’ve seen in the last year.
Haigh knows exactly how to leverage the school-boy kindness in Scott’s eyes, and tip him over during the film’s eerie scenes. And yet, a certain kind of love and longing permeate through a majority of the film’s 100-minute runtime, even when it turns into a fever dream. Would you lose your mind to speak to your dead parents for a few more minutes? What does unconditional love really mean – would you embrace a partner consumed by their loneliness? Would you lie beside them and offer them comfort when there’s little to no chance of this effort being reciprocated? All of Us Strangers marinates in these questions, not pretending to fully know the answers.
