In Saltburn, sex is basically gross. In Poor Things it is absurd. But in All of Us Strangers sex seems to be quite nice. The sort of thing I could imagine wanting to do with a person I liked a lot. Adam and Harry do move fairly quickly from being total strangers to taking their clothes off; but while they may not be the only gays in the village, they are apparently the only ones in their apartment block. Both of them are lonely and awkward; Adam is sad all the time, even when he's happy. There is a lot of emphasis on consent. "Just checking, you are queer?" "I'd like to fuck you if you're into fucking; it's okay if you're not". But it doesn't spoil the mood particularly."
One could almost read All of Us Strangers as an anti-Saltburn. It's partly about an unlikely relationship; it's partly about family. It's very much about the past. And it's a bugger to review. If that's not an inappropriate way of putting it. Because the film only reveals itself gradually. You might even say it's a little coy. Adam asks Harry to shut his eyes before he takes his pants off.
You will recall that when Saltburn revealed its hand, my reaction was "Oh, sod OFF!" In this case, it was more like "Aha!" And the "Aha!" came about five minutes after I'd left the cinema. So I kind of don't feel I should tell you what the film's about. I wouldn't, in fact, completely ruin it for you if I did. We're not talking about the Sixth Sense, although one scene did make me think of the Sixth Sense fairly strongly.
So, in the first, fifteen minutes or so we find Adam (Andrew Scott) living alone in a nearly empty block of flats. Harry (Paul Mescal) calls on him, and after a false start, they strike up an intimate relationship. But then we find Adam on a train-ride to visit his parents (Jamie Bell and Clair Foyle). There are a lot of train rides. I don't think I've ever seen a movie maker making use of the strange, distorting-mirror effect that the windows on the London Underground can produce before. But Adam has told Harry that he lost his parents in a car-crash when he was eleven; and we rapidly notice that their home decor and social attitudes are those of 1984-ish. Frankie Goes to Hollywood features prominently on the sound track.
So what's going on? I once saw a very old black and white film about a rich American newspaper man. The very last shot of the movie revealed the meaning of the main character's cryptic last words. It was a good twist. But the twist wasn't the point of the film: the point of the film was getting to know the sad rich old guy.
There are no sledges in All of Us Strangers. No statues of liberty, and no-one turns out to be anyone else's long lost relative. That's not what the film's about. It's about two nice but rather shy guys and how they come to share their feelings with each other. Adam doesn't like the term "queer"; Harry prefers it to "gay" because "gay" was used as an insult at his school. And it's about a guy who's approaching middle age reestablishing his relationship with his family.
Except it's maybe not really about either of those things.
The acting is at the opposite extreme from last week's character-based two hander: while the Holdovers was all performance and sharp dialogue and mutual put downs, this is murmured, subtle, realistic, sometimes barely audible. The simmering emotions are pretty big, but the British genius for understatement remains fully intact.
I spent the first half of the movie wondering where I had seen Andrew Scott before. He was, of course, Moriarty in Sherlock. His Dad was the young lad whose father didn't want him to be a ballet dancer. We're all getting very old.
If you can afford it, please consider becoming a Patreon, by pledging £1 or more each time I publish an essay on the main blog. (I don't charge for these little reviews.)
Please do not feed the troll.
No comments:
Post a Comment