All of Us Strangers (2023)

Every so often a film will knock the wind out of me in a way that I know I am watching something truly wonderful and unlike anything I have seen before. Few films touch me and move me as much as a film like All of Us Strangers, a film about intense loss and loneliness that gives us a dose of peace and optimism in the midst of all the aching. 

All of Us Strangers spoke to me in ways I did not expect. There something very specifically queer, gen X, and male about this film. Haigh and Scott centre this story in this very precise human experience and its specificity allows it to resonate so perfectly for those of us in that cohort as well as others who can share some of our experience. There is an intergenerational narrative here (in two directions) that is fascinating and hauntingly real. There is an incredible amount of pain and healing that is happening. 

Essentially All of Us Strangers is about saying all the unsaid things and this, this very remarkable task, is so gloriously beautiful and tragic at the same time. Haigh through his direction and words finds all of the complicated and powerful emotions in such a daunting task while keeping it all lovingly simple and honest. Yes All of Us Strangers ask a lot of us to process, the understand, to suspend disbelief, but it pays us back a thousand fold with an incredible beauty, a story that is just so overwhelming and magical, sad and happy, haunting and so fucking alive. 

Everyone in this cast is top notch. This is Scott's show but he is supported by incredible performances by Foy, Bell, and the outstanding Mescal.  But it is Scott who delivers a career defining performance in a career of outstanding incredible performances. Strangers is just masterful work by a cast at the top of their game. 

I will sit with all of the feelings Strangers has generated for me for a long time and I know I will revisit the film like a comforting slap across the face time and time again. There are a number of films that I knew, the first time I saw them, that they would stay with me for my lifetime and All of Us Strangers is one of those films. 

All of Us Strangers

Starring: Andrew Scott, Paul Mescal, Jamie Bell, Claire Foy

Writer/Director: Andrew Haigh