Andrew Haigh Takes a Clear-Eyed Look at Lasting Heartbreak in All of Us Strangers

Andrew Haigh’s previous film, the 2017 indie drama Lean On Pete, lays bare the loneliness and desperation of an economically disadvantaged young man who becomes fixated on taking care of an old racehorse. In All of Us Strangers, Haigh makes clear that loneliness need not confine itself to physically desolate landscapes. The solitary, melancholy Adam (Andrew Scott) seems reasonably well-off, though he insists to his neighbor Harry (Paul Mescal) that he’s not a particularly rich or famous type of writer. Still, he can afford a nice apartment in a London high-rise where, still, he feels removed from the world. For the moment, he and Harry appear to be the only tenants in the new building, and Adam’s job does afford him the ability to spend his days at home, alone. He only meets Harry when the younger man knocks on his door in a flirtatious, drunken stupor, assuming (correctly) that Adam is also gay.

Adam is working on a screenplay inspired by his childhood years, which has him thinking about one likely reason contributing to his loneliness: His parents both died in a car crash when he was only 12. Seeking to reconnect with his roots, Adam is drawn back to his old neighborhood, a train ride away from London, and is surprised yet somehow not exactly shocked at what he eventually finds: His father (Jamie Bell) and mother (Claire Foy), living in their old house, just as he remembers it. He is aware of the strangeness, and so are his parents; they understand that they have not been with Adam all these years, and that their renewed time with him may be limited, subject to disappear at any moment. The reunited family tries not to focus on this, instead having tea and catching up with Adam’s adult life.

Are his parents ghosts? Transposed memories? Hallucinations generated with unusual calm and rationality? Haigh, adapting a 1987 novel just called Strangers, does not commit to one particular explanation – even when it seems like maybe he has. Yet All of Us Strangers doesn’t have the watery, wishy-washy quality of the more precious strains of magical realism. In its way, it is as clear-eyed and upfront as it needs to be. This includes allowing that after the intense wave of relief and contained joy that Adam feels, he also encounters some disappointment. He never came out to his parents, having grown up at a strikingly different time and lost them before he fully came of age, and the lack of intervening years means that the fact of his sexuality requires some adjustment from them (and him, when he’s not immediately and enthusiastically embraced, bringing back some of his less honeyed memories of preadolescence). It’s especially difficult when he’s concurrently embarking on a relationship with Harry, and obviously yearning to share some of that gently blossoming happiness with the parents who fret about him.

All of Us Strangers consists mainly of conversations: Between Adam and his parents, together and separately; and between Adam and Harry, who both start to emerge from their own cases of loneliness. Occasionally, this straightforwardness surfaces too much of its daunting emotional power too quickly, too heavily; the very idea of getting to speak with long-dead parents is a tearjerker of a premise, almost regardless of the execution. With Adam himself sometimes (and realistically) welling up early and often, the movie risks blurting out its catharsis. As such, there are times when the film resembles an extended therapy session.

But Haigh avoids spending the back half of the movie mopping up tears by digging further into Adam’s psyche, his relationship with Harry acting as a distorted lens – sometimes near-literally, as when a night out on the town is shot with more impressionism and dreamlike touches than the more subtle visual strategy of earlier scenes. Though many of those scenes are in relatively simple, limited interiors, Haigh uses shallow focus and precise camera placement to make the staging feel intensely personal to his lead character’s experience. (And maybe to his own as well; he used his childhood home for many of the scenes with Adam’s parents.)

The performances are note perfect, as they must be with such a small cast. Scott quietly and expertly conveys that Adam is a man who doesn’t smile easily – that he can resemble a ghost himself, sometimes moreso than his more matter-of-fact dead family. Mescal, after playing another conflicted young man caught up in someone else’s family memories (while appearing in a scene scored to an old Blur track) in last year’s Aftersun, feels more familiar, but he keeps just the right amount of himself strategically hidden. Foy and Bell, the more famous actors of the quartet, never come across like an illusion, or a delusion. They feel like people, straight out of Adam’s memory.

For all its open-heartedness, All of Us Strangers doesn’t peddle easy uplift. The movie suggests that loneliness, isolation or ostracization – whether created by circumstance or intolerance – don’t heal like normal physical wounds, and that all the time in the world given over to that process wouldn’t necessarily feel like enough. A lot of movies attempt to replicate the experience of a dream; this one situates itself right on the edge, whether ecstatic or delirious or stricken, of waking up.

Director: Andrew Haigh
Writer: Andrew Haigh
Starring: Andrew Scott, Paul Mescal, Claire Foy, Jamie Bell
Release Date: October 1, 2023 (New York Film Festival); December 22, 2023 (theaters)

Jesse Hassenger is associate movies editor at Paste. He also writes about movies and other pop-culture stuff for a bunch of outlets including Polygon, Inside Hook, Vulture, and SportsAlcohol.com, where he also has a podcast. Following @rockmarooned on Twitter is a great way to find out about what he’s watching or listening to, and which terrifying flavor of Mountain Dew he has most recently consumed.