All of Us Strangers review – a supernova of a film

A sleek but cold skyscraper in Croydon is the primary setting for Andrew Haigh’s queer adaptation of Taichi Yamada’s 1987 novel ​‘Strangers’. Screenwriter Adam (Andrew Scott) is working on a script about his parents, who died in 1983 when he was 12, but despite mining the physical mementoes he keeps, the words just won’t come.

A chance encounter with his mysterious, charming neighbour Harry (Paul Mescal), seemingly the only other resident in the building, invites the possibility of romance into Adam’s life after years of solitude, and with it comes a strange new complication. When he returns to his childhood home in search of inspiration, Adam finds his parents exactly as they were before they died. Affable Dad (Jamie Bell) and doting Mum (Claire Foy) greet him warmly, eager to catch up.

Meanwhile, the process of reconnection allows Adam to let love in. His blossoming relationship with Harry begins as a hook-up; a way for them to stave off unspoken loneliness. But slowly something between them thaws. Adam begins to open up about his parents and his lonely childhood. Harry, who speaks with a syrupy Northern accent and is disarmingly forthcoming about his attraction to Adam, keeps his own troubles simmering beneath the service.

The chemistry between Scott and Mescal in their scenes is atomic; where Adam is shy and cagey, Harry is impossibly worldly, and just a little bit heartbreaking as he deflects by bringing Adam out of his shell. There’s something desperately sad in Mescal’s gaze that only begins to decode as the film slips into its devastating final act, while Scott’s delicacy is worlds away from the more bombastic performances he delivered in Sherlock or Fleabag.

Here he is tasked with portraying a protagonist who is withholding and drifting, stuck – quite literally – in the past, grieving for a life he lost, and a life he never got to live. Scott rises to the challenge, lost and lonely and lovely, a little boy who simultaneously grew up before he had to, while never quite processing his phenomenal loss.

It’s accurate to call All of Us Strangers a ghost story, but Haigh’s phantoms are far from the menacing Shirley Jackson or Henry James types. Instead, there’s a benevolence to these manifestations of insecurities and anxieties; they are avatars of conversations that were never had and time that was up too soon. One of Haigh’s great strengths is his ability to foster a deep connection between the audience and his characters, and the searing ache of losing a loved one is expertly captured here.

But so too does Haigh capture the catharsis offered by processing one’s pain, and learning to see your loved ones – particularly your parents – as human beings, flawed and fallible like anyone else. Such a painful excavation is profoundly moving and often wrenching, but also tentatively hopeful, suggesting peace only comes from learning to live with the melancholy of missing someone. It’s a ghost story, but it’s a love story too. One that will break your heart.

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