All of Us Strangers
Andrew Haigh’s psychological romance is an exploration of loss and loneliness that is as haunting as it is impenetrable.
Past imperfect: Andrew Scott
Such is the intimate nature of Andrew Haigh’s profoundly personal drama, that it exudes an air of autobiography. The director Andrew Haigh is openly gay, as is his protagonist Adam, played by the openly gay Andrew Scott. And Adam is a screenwriter, like Andrew Haigh, whose first two features, Greek Pete (2009) and Weekend (2011), dealt frankly with gay subject matter. So it comes as something of a surprise to discover that All of Us Strangers is actually based on the Japanese novel Summer of the Strange People, which was previously adapted for the screen in 1988. Yet the time and place of Haigh’s version is integral to his drama.
The film opens on a panorama of London at dawn, notable for the spike of the Shard on the far right of the picture, immediately establishing the period as post-2013. And these things are important. As is the opening image of Andrew Scott as Adam, illuminated by the rising sun as he looks out of his window at the city below, on which his image is reflected.
So, Adam is a successful screenwriter – like Andrew Haigh – who can afford an apartment with a spectacular view of London. We then cut to the opening title, already knowing so much. Then, when Adam types EXT SUBURBAN HOUSE 1987 on his laptop, we learn even more. Obviously 1987 is significant, which happens to be the date that the original novel was published. Initially, little more seems to happen, although we gather that Adam is at a loose end, lives on his own, eats takeaway leftovers from the fridge and watches trash TV during the day. But we are getting a sense of the man, a man who might have lost his purpose, in spite of his enviable real estate (“just a flat”).
Whatever Adam is writing would seem to be autobiographical, as he sifts through old photographs stashed under his bed. He doesn’t say much, but when he connects with a neighbour in his apartment block, Harry (Paul Mescal), we learn that he lost his parents at the age of twelve, in a car accident. “Not the most original of deaths,” he says by way of apology. For Adam, it might not seem the best place to start his emerging narrative, another ‘misery memoir’ for the canon. He also seems ill-at-ease with the stranger, reluctant to enter into a liaison with a different type of man, perhaps posing a threat to his solitary if comfortable status quo.
Later, leafing through a photograph album, he stops at a picture of a suburban house, glances out his window, spots a train, and is inspired to go on a journey, a journey back in time: to suburbia, specifically to Sanderstead in Surrey. We know this because the name of the station is reflected in the train window, albeit mirrored backwards. Again, Haigh is providing all the clues, albeit on a most subliminal level. Returning to the house in the photograph, Adam sees a boy’s face peering out of an upstairs window and walks on until, in local parkland, he spots a familiar figure, a man played by Jamie Bell.
At this point, much of the drama is played out on Andrew Scott’s face, as he absorbs the alien if familiar surroundings of his youth. The man he meets lights up a cigarette and takes him home, placing a vinyl record on the turntable, before reminiscing about old times. The tenor of the conversation, the music playing in the background (Pet Shop Boys, Fine Young Cannibals, Frankie Goes to Hollywood), even the clothes, seems to place the film in a different time frame. It is an unsettling transition, but is evoked with such stylish self-assurance that we are pulled into the film’s disorientating fever dream.
Few films manage to penetrate a psyche with such facility, permitting the face of a good actor to guide us through the emotional changes. In one scene, Adam’s reflection in a train window is transmogrified into a Francis Bacon painting, reflecting the onlooker’s inner turmoil. All of Us Strangers is full of such pictorial detail, at times bafflingly so, unfolding the private diary of a man entombed in a personal sense of loss. For many viewers it may come off as too recondite, abstruse even, but its exploration of memory, childhood, loneliness and possibly madness, leaves an indelible mark.
JAMES CAMERON-WILSON
Cast: Andrew Scott, Paul Mescal, Jamie Bell, Claire Foy.
Dir Andrew Haigh, Pro Graham Broadbent, Pete Czernin and Sarah Harvey, Screenplay Andrew Haigh, Ph Jamie D. Ramsay, Pro Des Sarah Finlay, Ed Jonathan Alberts, Music Emilie Levienaise-Farrouch, Costumes Sarah Blenkinsop.
Film4/Blueprint Pictures/TSG Entertainment-Searchlight Pictures.
105 mins. UK. 2023. US Rel: 22 December 2023. UK Rel: 26 January 2024. Cert. 15.
