When Frankie Goes to Hollywood’s romantic ballad “The Power of Love” plays and the scene fades to the twinkling night sky, director Andrew Haigh leaves you with profound emotional emptiness.
Pinpointing that precise emotion is a challenge. With dialogue inspired by the saddest parts of your childhood, did All of Us Strangers evoke devastation? Once you made it through the film’s vivid depictions of grief, did you walk away with a stronger understanding of love? Or did you come away with the terrifying realization that loneliness can plague us all?
In All of Us Strangers, loosely based on Taichi Yamada’s 1987 novel, Haigh ties these emotions together then slowly unravels their consequence: distance resulting from unresolved grief. How do you revisit the memories when there’s so much you wish you said? How do you move on?
Haigh explored all of this and more through lonely screenwriter Adam, played by Andrew Scott, who lives in an eerily empty high-rise on the outskirts of London. Adam struggles to write about his past despite routinely visiting his childhood home. A home where his parents, portrayed by Claire Foy and Jamie Bell, are living peacefully — just as they were 30 years ago before they died in a car crash.
Back at his London high-rise, Adam begins a romance with his cryptic neighbour Harry, portrayed by Paul Mescal. As Top of the Pops reruns play in the background, Harry shows up at Adam’s door in the middle of the night, nursing a bottle of whiskey and an irresistible charm.
All of Us Strangers uses fantasy as a vessel for the all-too-real emotions of grief. And maybe that’s what makes it so effective — examining grief by suspending belief. A big part of grieving is wondering what could have been, and how the person you lost would react to the person you are now.
Adam displays layered complexity through profound loneliness, his eyes always a little hollow and vulnerable. He elicits youthful innocence in an adult body as he begins to unwind his childhood trauma. In the film’s most tender moments, Adam’s vulnerability is present whether crawling into bed to snuggle with his parents, or coming out as gay to his trying-to-be-understanding mother.
Adam’s relationship with his parents fuels the film’s melancholic pace. Scott’s purity paired with Bell’s melting hard exterior complements the warm moments between Foy and Scott.
Scott avidly navigates Adam’s need to open himself to love with nervous tremors and sheepish disposition, and coming to the realization that the loneliness from his childhood is not something he can simply brush off.
Loneliness plagues Harry, too. He is far from perfect, but that doesn’t steer Adam away. In Adam’s mind, his lover is a little like himself: lonely but craving intimacy. A specific type of loneliness perfect for Mescal’s character, whose stare and brilliant smile mask a lingering sensitivity.
Together, Adam and Harry present not a romanticized loneliness, but rather a startling truth to its impact.
“‘Oh thanks, it happened a long time ago,’” Adam says to Harry about his parents’ death. “’I don’t think that really matters,’” Harry reassures.
Despite the characters’ hollow lives and their empty high-rise apartment complex, All of Us Strangers overflows with insurmountable feeling. Melancholia seeps from every aching line of dialogue, and the shadows of Adam’s past linger in frames of mirrors or train windows reflecting his 12-year-old self.
Always powerful but never emotionally manipulative, All of Us Strangers is the rare kind of story that leaves a permanent, haunting trace. A fitting result for a film about the lingering ability of grief.
Featured image from IMDb.
