• All of Us Strangers

4/9/24 (Tues)

A British adaptation by writer/director Andrew Haigh of the Japanese novel Strangers (1987), which was also filmed in Japanese the following year under the English title The Discarnates. The original Japanese title in both cases, Ijin-tachi no Natsu (偉人たちの夏) is something like “Summer with Strangers”, the latter word (ijin) usually referring to foreigners. Whereas the Japanese film followed the novel closely, Haigh has different ideas.

Adam, a television screenwriter, is one of only two residents in an apartment complex in London. Withdrawn and reticent, he does not appear to have any friends or social life. As he struggles with his latest screenplay, set in the neighborhood of his youth, he suddenly receives a late-night visit from the complex’s other resident, the handsome young Harry, who is drunk or high and, realizing that Adam is gay, comes on to him. Taken aback, Adam sends him away.

The next day, Adam visits his old neighborhood, presumably hoping for inspiration for his screenplay. There he runs into what appear to be his late parents, unchanged since their death in a car accident when he was just eleven. He is taken to his childhood home, where he quickly adapts to the unexpected situation. He catches them up with his life in the decades since they last met. Their reaction is not always what he had imagined, such as his mother’s surprise that his chest isn’t hairy (definitely not a line from the Japanese version); we are left to wonder whether these are actual ghosts or a dialogue that he is having with himself. When he comes out to them as gay, the father is hardly surprised, admitting that he probably would have bullied his sissy son in school along with the other kids, while the mother worries that he will catch strange diseases and be even more alienated and lonely. Still, he is able to enjoy the late childhood he never had and opens himself up in a way he clearly never has before. He treasures these moments and begins to visit them constantly.

Meanwhile, he runs into his neighbor again back at the complex and decides this time to invite him up. This lead to a romantic relationship, which appears to be Adam’s first ever. That ultimately devolves into drinking and drugs (ketamine), causing Adam to hallucinate. He begins to spot Harry in varied places – the station, the train – but always just out of reach.

Following Adam’s repeated visits home, his parents are concerned he is relying too much on them and tell him to stop coming. They go out for one final meal at a restaurant, where they sincerely express their love for him before disappearing before his eyes.

When he returns to his apartment, he goes spontaneously to Harry’s apartment. Finding the door unlocked, he enters to an overpowering stench. He discovers Harry’s decomposing body in bed, next to the empty bottle of the expensive Japanese whiskey he had brought that first night when Adam rejected him. Adam realizes that Harry has been dead since that time, meaning that he has been fantasizing the entire relationship. Just then, a melancholic Harry walks in dressed as he was in that first encounter. Reality and fantasy intertwine, and the final moments find the two in bed together. That is, though Adam has successfully exorcised his nostalgia for a childhood that never was, he remains torn between his fear of intimacy and his desire to love and be loved.

The film seems reluctant to give out too much information, which can work against it, especially with Adam’s withdrawn personality. We encounter him at the beginning looking forlorn in his large apartment but, unlike the Japanese film (where he is a divorcee and has problems at work), are given no background info, making it impossible to identify with him. We are simply expected to assume that he is lonely. As a television screenwriter, a collaborative art if ever there was one, he must interact with others at some point, but we never meet any of his friends or colleagues. (One friend suggested that this had to do with Covid-related isolation, but Adam’s problems seem much more deep seated.) Then, when he returns to his childhood home, he is strangely unresponsive when he meets his dead parents – you’d think he’d be at least a little surprised. I guess he can do anything he wants in his dream, but it doesn’t ring true. That said, his interactions with his parents are beautifully rendered, as he practically invents a past for himself before our eyes.

The scenes become surreal. Adam emerges amusingly in his old pajamas and gets in bed with his parents as in his childhood, but when he turns to his father, he discovers Harry instead. When Adam takes Harry to his old home, the latter sees the parents in the window, hinting, since they are invisible to others, that he himself is already dead at that point. His death is handled better than in the Japanese film, where the woman is genuinely a ghost and the story descends into clichéd horror. Adam’s lack of an intimate relationship suggests insecurities of some kind, perhaps about his sexuality. By the end, he has achieved a sort of peace with himself, though the uncertain ending with the imagined lover suggests he has still not been able to come to terms with reality.

Absolutely terrific performances by all four main characters, starting with a soulful Andrew Scott in the lead. A fascinating portrait of someone trying to deal with or shake off his past. Whether he succeeds is left ambiguous, which I don’t think was the best choice, but it’s an intelligent examination of his psychology. A thoughtful, and I think improved, adaptation of the Japanese source.