Rent All of Us Strangers (2023)

Poetry - All of Us Strangers review by AER

Beautiful film that makes you appreciate life. Sad and thoughtful. Recommended, just don't try to 'logic' the plot out of existence. Great performances all round.

A strong, emotional & moving story, dealing with the memories, ghosts & pain of the past - All of Us Strangers review by TB

Adam, played by Andrew Scott, is a lonely & delicate writer in his 40's, who has just moved into a new block of flats in central London. So new in fact, that almost nobody else lives there. The block is a metaphor for Adam's life: both in the center of things as well as feeling totally alone & an outsider. One night, he meets an enigmatic & drunk man called Harry (Mescal) who is one of the only other residents of the building. At the same time he also starts to confront the pain that has been inside him, eating him up & destroying him. This takes the form of going back to his childhood home & talking to his parents, who are strangely younger than he is & stuck in time.

The film is devastating in its portrayal of the pain & hurt as a result of the stigma of being gay in a time when the only things associated with that were AIDS hysteria & being condemned to live a lonely & difficult life. This is coupled with Adam's horrific early losses in his life. What the story does at its most brilliant is to have the conversations which we all wish we had had with our parents (I don't mean specifically about sexuality, I am talking about the massive number of issues that young people growing up face.)

The only thing for me that stops this film getting 5 stars is that the chemistry between Mescal & Scott never fully clicked for me. When you see Jamie Bell & Claire Foy together, they are perfection. But I never felt that with the two leads. They are both good on their own, but together I just wanted that little bit more.

Still, this is a devastating, beautiful & unbearably sad story about confronting the demons of our past.