All of Us Strangers

Andrew Haigh: All of Us Strangers (GB/US 2023) starring Paul Mescal (Harry) and Andrew Scott (Adam).

All of Us Strangers [Finnish and Swedish title] / Sans jamais nous connaître.

    GB/US 2023. PC: Blueprint Pictures / Film4 / Searchlight Pictures / TSG Entertainment. P: Graham Broadbent, Peter Czernin, Sarah Harvey.

    D+SC: Andrew Haigh - based on the novel Ijintachi to no natsu / Strangers (1987) by Taichi Yamada. Cin: Jamie Ramsay - Super 35 mm - colour - 1:2,39 - master format: 4K - release format: D-Cinema. PD: Sarah Finlay. AD: Bill Brown, Luke Deering. Set dec: Lauren Doss, Marian Murray. Cost: Sarah Blenkinsop. Makeup: Zoe Clare Brown, Nicola Buck. SFX: Scott McIntyre. VFX: Simon Hughes - Goldcrest VFX - Union VFX. M: Emilie Levienaise-Farrouch. S: Joakim Sundström - Dolby Digital. ED: Jonathan Alberts. Casting: Kahleen Crawford.

    Soundtrack: Frankie Goes to Hollywood: "The Power of Love" (Holly Johnson, Peter Gill, Mark O'Toole, Brian Nash, 1984) ; Pet Shop Boys: "Always on My Mind" (1987) originally written by Wayne Carson, Mark James, Johnny Christopher (1972) ; The Housemartins: "Build" (Paul Heaton, San Cullimore, 1987).

    C: Andrew Scott (Adam), Paul Mescal (Harry), Carter John Grout (Young Adam), Jamie Bell (Dad), Claire Foy (Mum), Ami Tredrea (Waitress).

    Loc: London ; Sanderstead, South Croydon ; Insignia Point, Stratford, Newham ; The Vauxhall Tavern

    105 min

    Festival premiere: 31 Aug 2023 Telluride.

    US premiere: 22 Dec 2023.

    UK premiere: 26 Jan 2024.

    French premiere: 14 Feb 2024, released by Walt Disney Company France, sous-titres francais: Sylvestre Melninger.

    Finnish premiere: 8 March 2024, released by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures Finland.

    Viewed at MK2 Odéon côté St Germain, Saint-Germain-des-Prés, Métro Odéon, 113 bd Saint-Germain, 75006 Paris, 17 Feb 2024.

Bilge Ebiri (Telluride Film Festival 2023): " Adam (Andrew Scott) and Harry (Paul Mescal), the sole inhabitants of a large, brand new apartment building, meet one night after a fire alarm echoes through the halls. Adam is a struggling screenwriter attempting to work on a story about his suburban childhood, and his encounter with Harry sends him back to his hometown, where he finds his parents (Jamie Bell and Claire Foy)—preserved at the age they were when he saw them last. Is this a ghost story, or a dream, or something else? Andrew Haigh (LEAN ON PETE, 45 YEARS) has created a quietly expressive and affecting story, plunging us into the tactile and sensuous pleasures of an intoxicating world, one caught between memory and the present, between regret and possibility. –BE (U.K., 2023, 105m) In person: Andrew Haigh "

Synopsis from the production notes. " One night in his near-empty tower block in contemporary London, Adam (Andrew Scott) has a chance encounter with a mysterious neighbor Harry (Paul Mescal), which punctures the rhythm of his everyday life. As a relationship develops between them, Adam is preoccupied with memories of the past and finds himself drawn back to the suburban town where he grew up, and the childhood home where his parents (Claire Foy and Jamie Bell), appear to be living, just as they were on the day they died, 30 years before. "

AA: Andrew Haigh's intensely lyrical vision of urban solitude, contrasting London's tower brutalism with Croydon's suburban hometown nostalgia. Train ride passages between them emerge as refrains in this surprising poetic journey into memory and imagination.

Based on a Japanese ghost story by Taichi Yamada, Haigh explores a homosexual romance in the present, while processing the trauma of becoming orphaned in the 1980s. Revenants from the past and the present appear as contemporary reality in the world of the lonesome Adam (Andrew Scott). 

Jamie Ramsay shoots the film impressively, drawing advantage from the refined warmth and nuance of photochemical 35 mm film and the grandeur of vision of the scope frame. There is a cosmic sense in the movie, a celestial presence of the stars in the sky and the red moon. The general ambience is warm and tender.

Adam's relationships with his parents and his lover Harry appear as real during the film, and only afterwards do we understand that they were ghosts. Everything in the movie is subjective. The whole thing takes place in Adam's consciousness. It is a voyage in his inner world.

It is a tale of a double healing process from profound shocks: the death of Adam's parents in a car accident, and the death of Harry in a drug-and-alcohol overdose. In dreams, Adam walks with them until he is able to come to terms with overwhelming loss and grief.

Music from the 1980s in all-important. The main theme tune is Frankie Goes To Hollywood's "The Power Of Love". "Always On My Mind" is the song that connects Adam with his parents. Adam is playing the Pet Shop Boys interpretation, but the parents sing along, familiar with the original versions of Brenda Lee and Elvis Presley.

BEYOND THE JUMP BREAK: FROM THE PRODUCTION NOTES:

BEYOND THE JUMP BREAK: FROM THE PRODUCTION NOTES:

" ALL OF US STRANGERS is the latest film from esteemed British filmmaker Andrew Haigh (Lean on Pete, 45 Years, Weekend). The hauntingly poignant and hypnotic story of loss and love (and everything in between), is inspired by the novel Strangers by venerable Japanese author Taichi Yamada. First penned in 1987 and translated into English in 2003, Haigh’s adapted screenplay gives it a contemporary and personal touch.  

In June of 2017, Graham Broadbent and Sarah Harvey of Blueprint first pitched their creative vision for the film to Yamada and his family. Says Harvey, "It was important for all of us to invest in the emotional core of the story, perhaps more so than the traditional ghost elements of the story.”  

Following this, Blueprint proceeded to look for the perfect writer/director to adapt the material.  They immediately sent the book to Haigh, with whom they had wanted to work with for some time. They felt he had the right sensibility – he had shown a great aptitude for nuanced character work in his films Weekend and 45 Years, as well as TV s ‘The North Water’.  “ Sarah and I tried to match talent to material to see if we could find some thread,” says Broadbent. “Andrew had never done anything in this area before, but he responded to the book and I was beautifully surprised, because I’d wanted to make a film with him for ages.”  

Recalls Haigh, “What I loved about the novel was its central conceit: what if you met your parents again long after they were gone, only now they’re the same age as you? It seemed such an emotional way to explore the nature of family. That became my starting point.”  

By late 2017 – and with Yamada’s blessing – he along with Blueprint pitched the project to Daniel Battsek and Ollie Madden at Film4, who came on board and funded the development. 

Haigh placed the story in a world more recognizable to his own. 

“Adapting the book was a long and sometimes painful process,” Haigh admits. “I wanted to pick away at my own past as Adam does in the film. I was interested in exploring the complexities of both familial and romantic love, but also the distinct experience of a specific generation of gay people growing up in the 80s. I wanted to move away from the traditional ghost story of the novel and find something more psychological, almost metaphysical.”  Haigh has masterfully stuck to his word, transcending the tropes of a ‘ghost story’.  

“We really needed an auteur who had a clarity of vision to adapt the story,” says Broadbent. “He had a very clear vision of what he was trying to say, the themes that he was exploring, and that doesn’t always happen.”  

Yamada and his family were incredibly respectful of Haigh’s vision, which changed the central character of the story to a gay man, and when they ultimately read the script, they gave their blessing to make the film. 

***

Creating the World(s) 

 

“ I could see all the good things, in life I’ve never had” - Patsy Cline 

 

If I Could See the World (Through the Eyes of a Child) 

 

Though ALL OF US STRANGERS is set in a singular time frame and era, the sequences when Adam returns to his childhood home to see his parents take place in a 1980s version of our world, as though stepping into a dream, a hazy, nostalgia-induced memory. To enforce the notion of realism and play up Haigh’s personal connection to the story, some of these scenes were shot in his actual childhood home. 

“When I thought of a childhood home, it was my own, and as we were preparing to shoot, I went back to the area I grew up, just outside of Croydon,” Haigh explains. I hadn’t been there for forty years, not since I moved away when I was ten. Perhaps foolishly, I decided it might be a good idea to try and film in the house where we used to live. ” 

While there are inevitable changes to the house Haigh once knew (not least due to a few changes of ownership), the director admits that dressing the new set didn’t require as much work as he envisaged.  

“The guy that lives in the house now hadn’t decorated it for thirty years. So much of it was still the same. It was like stepping into a half-remembered memory. It was the strangest of feelings.” 

According to Scott, Haigh appeared unnervingly calm while on location at his old abode. “It’s an incredibly brave thing to do, because of course it’s going to trigger lots of personal feelings,” he recognizes. “But he never makes it about himself, he makes you feel like it’s your story.” 

Bell also felt there was an added sensitivity working in his director’s own childhood home, and a certain respect that was required from all involved.  He says, “It’s kind of hallowed turf, in a way. We’ve all been very respectful in terms of what this means for him.”  

When it came to the set, the integral work done by the production team – which includes production designer Sarah Finlay (45 Years), costume designer Sarah Blenkinsop (The Lobster), and Hair & Makeup Designer Zoe Clare Brown (Star Wars: Episode VII) – helped enforce a true sense of authenticity. 

“When I went into Adam’s childhood bedroom, there were so many things in there that I had in my own childhood bedroom. I was taking pictures of them and sending them to my siblings going, ‘oh my God, do you remember this?’ It’s very beautifully reproduced and well-researched,” Scott recalls. 

Foy also recognized many things from her own youth during the making of ALL OF US STRANGERS. 

“There must have only been one shop,” she jokes. “There were so many things that I was like, ‘we had those sheets. We had that lampshade. I think we had that rug. ’It was very surreal and it made me think a lot about what my children are going to say about our homes in forty years ’time.” 

Hair & Makeup designer Zoe Clare Brown’s task was to make both Foy and Bell appear as though they stepped straight out of the 1980’s. “But Andrew [Haigh] didn’t want to go overtly 80s in a clichéd way,” she says. “He wanted to reign it in.” 

For Brown, Haigh’s meticulous eye and care made it a fulfilling collaboration.  She adds, “In the way that he was emotionally and personally connected, it made me want to be part of it – because it was such a personal journey for him.”  

 

“ Standing on his own, why did he bother? Should have slept alone” – Blur 

Death of a Party 

 

The romantic parallel journey of ALL OF US STRANGERS takes place in a more familiar, contemporary London. Scenes there range from the towering, modern apartment block where both Adam and Paul live, to the nightclub, which hosts an impactful and beautifully rendered portion of the film, shot on location at the iconic queer London institution: the Vauxhall Tavern. 

The isolation of the former set where Adam lives adds not only to the themes of loneliness that are prevalent, but to an otherworldly feeling which plays up to the supernatural element of the story. Producers Harvey and Broadbent do admit, however, that securing a building wasn’t the most straightforward of tasks. 

“It was really tricky to find the tower block,” Harvey explains. “It’s such a key part of the story as it really symbolizes the character’s isolation, and feeling very disconnected from the world, so we all had a real vision in mind.” 

Production ultimately opted to build a set instead, which came with additional positives, as Broadbent explains. “The decision was made to build the tower block in a studio, and that gave us increased flexibility:  you can move the walls, you can move the cameras, you can move around. We spent a lot of time in that apartment.”  

In the olden days, production might have put green screens outside that apartment, to drop in an outside environment plausible as the view – but the crew had a new technique for this: a myriad of extraordinary TV screens. 

He continues, “We filmed what the view would actually be from the apartment to put it onto these five hundred LED screens, and it meant whichever way you shot within the apartment, the outside view was plausible and interesting. It was rolling footage because it had to move, it couldn’t be static. It allowed us to create very real environments from a stage.” 

Though this technology added a sense of realism, Haigh also needed the tower block set to inform the somewhat eery tonality.  

“I wanted the environment in which Adam lives to reflect his state of mind,” Haigh explains, “a manifestation of his aloneness.” 

“It almost feels apocalyptic,” Mescal adds. “It mirrors the isolation of the world to a certain extent: you’ve got these corporate towers, and these cities that are rapidly eroding, and you feel like little ants in this massive tower. If you’re not inclined to go out and mix with the world, you can very easily find a place that isolates you. That’s what the tower represents, it feels cold and soulless. And in the face of all that, these two characters still manage to find a connection which I think is really uplifting.” 

The off-realism feeling, the ever-so-slightly otherworldly atmosphere, was something that was also informed by production designer Sarah Finlay, as she cites a rather renowned artist that gave her some inspiration. 

“There was a Francis Bacon exhibition in London and the paintings were really strong, timeless, and there’s something about floating in time and space, about a lot of those images which ties in really well with this script,” she says. 

Away from the 27th floor of this tower block, and back on lower ground, the production team were thrilled that the nightclub sequences were filmed at the Vauxhall Tavern venue. An institution in the gay community, it allowed the actors and filmmakers to utilize the building’s natural spirit, entrenched in local history and culture, to make for one of the film’s memorable sequences as Adam and Harry head out into the world, together.  

 

Navigating the Profound 

 

“Little things I should have said or done, I never took the time” – The Pet Shop Boys 

Always On My Mind 

   

The distinctive tonality of ALL OF US STRANGERS at times takes on a sort of ethereal quality. It is also grounded by the way in which it tackles the human experience. Its many layers and textures carry a profound, emotional undercurrent. 

Haigh creates a tone rich with nostalgia and yearning, a powerful emotional pull for Adam.  

“Adam is yearning to see his parents again, aching to be known by them,” says Haigh. “Perhaps finding them again will bring comfort and closure after the terrible loss. But it’s no easy task, nostalgia can often hide a different truth, and his parents were a product of the time they lived. Adam must also confront his fragile sense of self, battered by growing up gay in the 80s and 90s. Two traumas perhaps, closely entwined, stopping him from finding peace.” 

Says Haigh, “I wanted the film to have the texture of the past, which is one of the reasons we pushed to shoot on 35mm film. I wanted the film to feel, if not quite like a dream, then like the moment just before you fall asleep or the moment you wake from a dream, not quite sure what’s real. A more liminal space.” 

Rather than play up to the supernatural elements, Haigh instead wanted to focus on the notion of memory and how it works. 

“Memories define us; they define what we become, our character, both for good and bad. I dug deep into my memories of growing up. It was a painful but cathartic experiment. ’ He continues, “Adam gets to be a child again. I think everybody can relate to that idea of wanting to go back and redefine what your relationship is with your parents. I wanted it to be cathartic for Adam but a complicated catharsis. I want the audience to feel a similar thing.”  

He adds, “In many ways, the film is about how you integrate emotional pain into your life. That pain will never vanish, it will always find a hiding place, but that doesn’t mean you can’t move forward.” 

Bell admits that the shoot really moved him, and that it left a lasting impact on him as a parent. “Adam’s parents went out one night and they didn’t come home. Life is so unpredictable,” he says. “I just hope that that’s the thing that resonates with people, when kids are young it’s so precious and time really flies by so quickly. Such a clichéd thing to say, but it would be great if people went home and hugged their kids.” 

Conversely, it was also the sense of normalcy that really appealed to Bell and helped him find a connection to the scenes.  

“We’re not doing your usual tropes of a horror story or a ghost story,” he explains. “We are technically apparitions, but we are just living in the moment. We are not considering that this has a finite time on it. We’re not considerate of the rules on what it means to be dead. I don’t think we’re ever really discussing the logistics of what that means, necessarily, and that’s what I loved about it.” 

Scott says, smiling, “It was a very emotional shoot. I really connect to a lot of it personally, being a gay person myself, and those experiences of hoping that your family will stay with you when you tell them who you are. I think that’s something not just gay people experience – everybody wants to feel connected to their family.” 

“In some ways, it’s all about love and connection,” says producer Broadbent. “Familial love and romantic love. What would you want to tell your parents about your life if you could revisit them – or what would you tell them right now? And in romantic relationships, it’s the push and pull of love, and how you explore that, and what we are to each other. Those are central strands in this film.” 

“Watching Adam and Harry connect feels very authentic, real and passionate. They fancy each other,” Mescal explains. “They’re both fundamentally very good people. They both feel very isolated, and the film’s essentially about finding connection. But then I think it supersedes that, and they find true connection in a world that feels impersonal, or cold. It’s harder and harder to find the connections that we see Adam and Harry have in the film.” 

He continues, “It’s very emotional. You’re dealing with two men who want to feel connected to the world and people around them, and are struggling with seizing that connection. And that’s a very easy thing to relate to, and empathize with those characters.”  Scott also examines the romantic narrative, and what brings these two lost souls into each other’s lives. “Harry is a very different character than Adam,” he says. “I think they’re both very vulnerable. I think it’s one of those things where they immediately see and then love each other. One of the challenges for Paul and I was how do you play chemistry without giving away too much biography? Because the characters have to maintain a sort of element of mystery. So we played it for love first, it’s a very beautiful thing to get to play on camera.”  Scott continues, “I like complicated emotion that you can’t quite put your finger on. It’s a bit like melancholy as an emotion, it’s both sad and oddly joyful at exactly the same time, and I love those kinds of emotions that seem to be battling each other, but work as a whole as well.”  

“I’ve made enough films now to know that people respond to things differently, but what I want to do is provoke questions, provoke emotion,” says Haigh.  

“All of us have been children, and most will lose our parents. Many of us will be parents ourselves and have kids who will grow into adults in the blink of an eye. Many of us will find and lose and hopefully find love again, even if it doesn’t last an eternity.” Haigh continues, “And all of us understand the complexity and importance of these relationships, and hopefully, when you leave the cinema, what you feel more than anything, is the power of love.”  "