“They say it’s a very lonely kind of life.”

Mum

Adapted by writer-director Andrew Haigh from a novel by Taichi Yamada, All of Us Strangers is a haunting exploration of love and traumatic grief in the mind of a struggling author. Andrew Scott is mesmerising as the unravelling Adam visiting his childhood home and conversing with his parents (particularly strange when set less than a mile from my own childhood home), the generational gap reflecting shifting societal attitudes toward homosexuality. Mescal is mysterious as the neighbour with whom he starts a relationship, though the supporting roles are all well-acted sketches, equally unknowable to Adam. Jamie Ramsay’s beautiful cinematography captures loneliness, isolating characters in both the darkness and the daylight. This, in combination with Emilie Levienaise-Farrouch’s score, provides tonal similarities with Living, to which they both contributed. Much of All of Us Strangers feels ephemeral, with gentle transitions between scenes feeling dreamlike, deliberately clouding what is real or imagined. The trauma Adam carries may be personal but the exploration here is universal — from the lifelong impact of small childhood moments to the discomfort of veiling one’s authentic self.

8/10