We Are Who We Are aches with long­ing for the sum­mer of youth

While one would nev­er expect a teenag­er to be ecsta­t­ic about leav­ing their home city, their friends and every­thing famil­iar behind to embark on a new life over­seas, one would at least expect to see a trace of curios­i­ty upon land­ing in an unfa­mil­iar coun­try. Espe­cial­ly a coun­try as cul­tur­al­ly rich as Italy – and espe­cial­ly a teenag­er like Frasi­er (Jack Dylan Graz­er), who exudes a self-con­scious styl­ish­ness in his choice of fash­ion and footwear.

Upon first being intro­duced to the char­ac­ter, how­ev­er, as he whines and moans about his lost suit­case and being thirsty while his moth­ers, Sarah (Chloë Sevi­gny) and Mag­gie (Alice Bra­ga), calm­ly try to sort out the bag­gage sit­u­a­tion, the only thing we get from him is indif­fer­ence and hostility.

Set in 2016, Luca Guadagnino’s We Are Who We Are fol­lows this uncon­ven­tion­al mil­i­tary fam­i­ly as they set­tle into their new base in Chiog­gia. In its pre­mière episode, ​‘Right Here Right Now I’, Jen­ny (Faith Alabi) is assigned to pick them up from the air­port, escort them to their new home and show them the ropes. As much as she tries to hide her sur­prise and dis­com­fort real­is­ing that Sarah and Mag­gie are mar­ried, she fails mis­er­ably, and is repeat­ed­ly thrown by their fam­i­ly dynam­ic and Frasier’s eccen­tric and rude mannerisms.

Sevi­gny slips into her char­ac­ter effort­less­ly, por­tray­ing Sarah as sto­ic and extreme­ly out­spo­ken; she is in com­plete con­trol of her sur­round­ings and, more so, her new posi­tion as com­man­der. She is quick to com­ment on the small church on base, which is pre­dom­i­nant­ly attend­ed by Chris­tians, and the fact that she feels a ​“duty to respect those that aren’t.”

Sarah’s roles as out­post com­man­der and wife to Mag­gie stark­ly con­trast her role as a moth­er. Her rela­tion­ship to Frasi­er is marked by a baf­fling inabil­i­ty to dis­ci­pline him, not to men­tion an unhealthy urge to nur­ture and, most sig­nif­i­cant­ly, be need­ed on an infan­tile lev­el. Though Mag­gie seems to be equal­ly for­giv­ing of Frasier’s strop­py atti­tude and utter dis­re­gard of oth­er people’s per­son­al space, she at least attempts to treat him his age.

Watch­ing Frasier’s behav­iour in his home envi­ron­ment can be rather infu­ri­at­ing, as his atti­tude goes beyond that of a sulky, rebel­lious teenag­er and into the realms of down-right spoilt, dis­re­spect­ful and unlike­able. Once he begins to nav­i­gate his new home base, how­ev­er, we see a dif­fer­ent side to him, one that is endear­ing and some­how coura­geous in all its awk­ward­ness and über-cool attire.

Even in Lit­tle Amer­i­ca, where the shop on base is stocked iden­ti­cal­ly to the shops on every oth­er mil­i­tary base in the world (to stop peo­ple from get­ting and feel­ing lost), Frasi­er stands out. Not just because he’s new, but because he’s a New York­er. To most kids here, New York is as alien as the leop­ard print shorts he wears, as intrigu­ing as the alter­nat­ing colours of nail var­nish he wears on each fin­ger. Though they are Amer­i­can by nation­al­i­ty, most of them have nev­er lived in, or pos­si­bly even been to, the coun­try. This adds anoth­er lay­er to the new-kid-on-the-block expe­ri­ence, one that is pos­si­bly more intim­i­dat­ing than any typ­i­cal tran­si­tion from one high school sce­nario to another.

And yet, Frasi­er han­dles the sit­u­a­tion with con­fi­dence and poise, danc­ing to the beat of his elec­tric music, tak­ing in the gen­er­ous sight­ings of male bod­ies all around him, and mak­ing it known that he is look­ing to make a con­nec­tion with Caitlin (Jor­dan Kris­tine Seamón) in indi­rect­ly con­spic­u­ous man­ners, for he has recog­nised some­thing in her which he clear­ly relates to. Unlike every­where else on base, he knows they can be some­one – be who they tru­ly are – with­out requir­ing an ID card.

Under Guadagnino’s mas­ter­ful direc­tion, We Are Who We Are radi­ates a sticky kind of ado­les­cent heat as it exam­ines the char­ac­ters’ iden­ti­ties, which are refract­ed through both the relaxed Ital­ian set­ting and rigid Amer­i­can mil­i­tary cus­toms. On the evi­dence of its first episode, this is a minis­eries which aches with a long­ing for those end­less sum­mer days that saw us come of age.