Movie Review All of Us Strangers

All of Us Strangers (2023) 

Directed by Andrew Haigh

Written by Andrew Haigh 

Starring Andrew Scott, Paul Mescal, Jamie Bell, Claire Foy 

Release Date August 31st, 2023 

Published December 4th, 2023 

Imagine returning to your childhood home as an adult and finding members of your family who have long since died, living there. They see the adult you that they never knew but they still recognize you and welcome you inside. You share laughter and memories and tears and promises are made about more visits. That's where the movie, All of Us Strangers from writer-director Andrew Haigh, begins. Adam, played by Andrew Scott, lost his parents when he was quite young. The harm from this traumatic loss has lingered through his entire life. When he returns to his childhood home and is greeted by his parents as he remembered them from youth, the confusion, heartache, and catharsis are bubbling over. 

If that's where the story of All of Us Strangers begins, you can't begin to imagine how it ends but I won't spoil that here. Adam is a deeply sheltered and broken man. As an adult he lives in an eerily empty apartment building in London. The lonely hallways are underlined by a scene where a fire alarm goes off and Adam retreats from the building surrounded by no one else. As he glances up to the building, there are so few people around that he is able to lock eyes with a neighbor who blew off the alarm and remained in the building. Adam knows he and his neighbor are communicating because no one else is around. 

That neighbor is Harry (Paul Mescal) who took their unique meet-cute, Adam glancing up at the building, Harry smiling and waving to him, as an invitation to meet Adam at Adam's apartment. After Adam has returned to the building, Harry is at his apartment door. He has a special bottle of whiskey and offers to share it with his lonely neighbor. The implications here are not subtle, Harry is openly flirtatious and Adam reluctantly so. Despite Harry's charm, Adam sends him away. That's not the last we will see of Henry however, as eventually, Adam's interaction with his late parents, played by Jamie Bell and Claire Foy, to take a chance on his own potential happiness. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Movie Review Aftersun

Aftersun (2022) 

Directed by Charlotte Wells 

Written by Charlotte Wells 

Starring Paul Mescal, Frankie Corio, Celia Rowlson-Hall 

Release Date October 21st, 2022 

Published December 14th, 2022 

Aftersun is a quiet and thoughtful meditation on the struggles of growing up as both a child and a young parent. Paul Mescal stars in the film as Calum Paterson, the father of Sophie (Frankie Corio), a precocious young woman. Together, father and daughter are taking a holiday in Turkey, some time in the late 90s. It's unclear why Dad chose this location or whether he could even afford such a vacation, his work back home in England seems unstable, at best, based on a few snatches of dialogue throughout the film. 

First time director Charlotte Wells takes a fly on the wall approach to Aftersun which gives the storytelling a strongly authentic feel. Father and daughter talk but the drama of the story is in what is not said. It comes from the moments when Calum, clearly struggling with his mental health, likely depression, does everything he can not to let on to his daughter that something is wrong. He already feels guilty for not being around more, he and Sophie's mother have split up, and he's struggling with being young and not knowing how to be a father. 

The film story evolves through a series of set pieces, seemingly mundane moments of father-daughter bonding. Swimming, sun tanning, dinners, video games, even a little pool hustling, dad and daughter have an unconventional relationship. Calum is a loving father, he takes his fatherly authority seriously but he's also young, inexperienced, and rather clueless about how to be a dad to a growing young woman. He's filled with love but also fear, confusion, and mild ambivalence. He's fighting internally over whether Sophie could be happier without him. 

What happens with Calum is a bit of a mystery. We know that this vacation occurred in the pre-internet past. No cell phones or email. We know, from flash forwards to an older Sophie, played by Celia Rowlson-Hall, that Calum was, at the very least, absent from his daughter's life some time after this vacation. And we know from a series of brief dream sequences that there is antipathy between father and daughter though what that antipathy extends from, we don't know, we assume it comes from his absence. 

Charlotte Wells is deliberately vague about Calum's motivations and what his intentions are after having spent this week on vacation with his daughter. The temptation is to assume that he may have committed suicide but there is no direct indication that this is what occurred. Aftersun subtly and brilliantly leaves bread crumbs that could lead in that direction but the movie isn't about setting you up for a big gut punch, this is an observant human drama where you will have to discern for yourself what the outcome may be. 

Aftersun is a gorgeous film, the locations are lovely but also fitting of a man who can't afford luxury but appears to be spending all that he has for what luxury he can get. The father-daughter dynamic is lovely with Frankie Corio delivering a charming performance, never too precocious, never beyond her years. She's observant, and she does act as an audience avatar, trying hard to understand her loving yet inscrutable father, but she's mostly just a kid who loves her dad. 

Click here for my full length review at Geeks.Media.