Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival: All of Us Strangers
Andrew Scott’s performance alone is worth the investment of time and money even as the film doesn’t quite work as a whole.
The Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival (PӦFF) runs in-person in Tallinn, Estonia, from November 3 to 19. Joshua Polanski will be reviewing for Midwest Film Journal live from Estonia as part of his multi-outlet coverage of the festival. Be sure to check out his website for updates on additional coverage.
An unphased celebration of tender masculinity and a dissection of grief, All of Us Strangers features what is bound to be one of the best performances of the year — from Andrew Scott as Adam, a man who mysteriously encounters his parents although they died many years ago. Scott’s performance alone is worth the investment of time and money even as the film doesn’t quite work as a whole.
Based on Taichi Yamada’s novel Strangers (and previously adapted in 1988 as The Discarnates by famed House director Nobuhiko Obayashi), Andrew Haigh’s adaptation (Weekend, 45 Years) replaces Yamada’s heterosexual couple with a male same-sex couple. After a trip to his childhood home, Adam encounters a couple younger than himself (played by Jamie Bell and Claire Foy) — a couple that we soon learn are actually his parents, who died in a car wreck in the 1980s when Adam was merely a kid. The supernatural intervention in Adam’s life comes shortly after he spawns a new relationship with his drunk and flirty neighbor, Harry (Paul Mescal), a mysterious, angelic ghost of a man.
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