All of Us Strangers written and directed by Andrew Haigh, and based on the novel Strangers by Taichi Yamada

 

Spoilers, Spoilers, and more Spoilers ...

Having not been to the Cinema for years we have been twice in as many weeks, first to see The Lost Boys (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt16148552/) which shows the possibility of tenderness in tough places, and then All of Us Strangers (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_of_Us_Strangers).

The first thing I want to say is hands up if you know of another film adaptation that changed a books straight characters into gay/queer characters rather than making the queer straight – signs of the times, perhaps.

The “central conceit” is allowing 47 year old Adam to have conversations with the parents of 12 year old Adam on equal terms. I am not sure if it is a nod to Yamada that Adam’s time travel is to 1987 the year Strangers was published or if it just takes us to a particularly toxic moment in queer history.

In the conversation between Adam and his Mother in which he comes out, her reaction, in the context of 1987, is entirely understandable as she lives in a society that makes the lives of queer people hard and therefore she is naturally worried that her son is going to be subjected to that hardship. Adam tells her that these fears are unfounded and yet he is not happy – the poor mental health of middle-aged queer people in 2024 has a lot to do with the toxicity of the 1980s – all the progress in LGB rights, and the progress in terms of prevention and treatment of HIV/AIDS, does not completely remove the baggage from our youth. (while T+ rights are tragically in reverse).

Alongside Adam and his parents you have the dynamic of Adam and Harry, that gay men find each other by waving out the window rather than staring at the grid on Grindr is perhaps more far fetched than time-travelling to chat with your death parents! Those of us of Adam’s generation long to see the rising generation of queer people living the uncomplicated lives we never imagined could be ours. And yet it turns out Harry’s loneliness is fatal while Adam’s was just miserable.

It is an intense film, but I was also frustrated by it – I am can’t comment on Yamada’s original, but in this adaptation the narrative around Adam and his parents felt like a short story that could have been trimmed by a couple of pages. Meanwhile given where it ends I am not sure what Harry’s narrative actually gave us, in the final moments of the film I was left with Dallas vibes, darker than Bobby Ewing walking out the shower but just the same you find yourself writing off all that had gone before.

Harry’s loneliness in the midst of the city had been a point of connection for Adam – but it turns out it was a connection that slipped between Adam’s fingers – whether he imagined it, or actually encountered Harry’s ghost, or any other interpretation that it is open to.

If was a film that was very good at messing with my emotions, and maybe that is what films are for, and I am not asking for a “Hollywood” happy ending, but I guess I left the cinema punch drunk and not really know what to do with any of it...