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denimbex1986 · 3 months

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'Since its debut screening at Telluride, All Of US Strangers has been greeted with critical raves, multiple awards nominations and filmgoers moved to tears by its quietly devastating story. Set in modern London, though featuring periodic detours to one of its southern suburban towns, it tells of a screenwriter, Adam (Andrew Scott), who tentatively begins a relationship with a charismatic neighbour, Harry (Paul Mescal).

As the romance develops and deepens, Adam is drawn back to the place where he grew up and the suburban childhood home he left when he was 11 after his parents died in a car crash. There, both his mum (Claire Foy) and dad (Jamie Bell) appear to still be alive, just as he remembers them from decades earlier.

Writer/director Andrew Haigh (Weekend, 45 Years) used the home he himself was raised in as the location for the scenes featuring Adam and his parents. It lends a deeply personal resonance to a film that received seven prizes at December’s British Independent Film Awards and is now in contention for six Baftas, including for outstanding British film.

Screen International spoke to the director about four key scenes from the film - spoilers follow.

Adam and Harry meet for the first time

The scene: When a fire alarm drives him from his tower block apartment, Adam sees Harry looking down from a window. Soon after, a drunken Harry turns up at Adam’s door. The pair have a flirtatious conversation, but Adam turns Harry away.

Andrew Haigh: “We found it complicated to find a building to double for Adam’s tower block, because they are usually owned by multinationals who don’t want you to film in them. But we found a building in Stratford, on the edge of London, which suited a person like Adam who has locked himself away from the world and has a routine that keeps him in that aloneness.

“We did the interior of Adam’s apartment on a soundstage, and had big LED panels with the outside of London projected on them. I wanted the film to have a sort of strangeness from the very beginning that felt slightly shifted from reality, and those LED panels gave it that. Director of photography Jamie Ramsey was able to do something slightly different with the focus - the deep background outside is more in focus than it ever would be if you were shooting in a real apartment. That was enormously useful in bringing a slight oddness to being in this room.

“When Adam opens the door on Harry, we first see Harry’s face in a mirror on the wall. There are a lot of mirrors and reflections in the film, and I like it here because it’s as if Adam is being faced with a reflection of himself — someone else who is intensely alone and is reaching out and looking for help. It was a hard scene for Paul — he’s got to play drunk, be flirtatious and sexual, but also some desperation has to be leaking out underneath the surface. It can’t just be a ‘meet cute’, there has to be a reason why Adam shuts the door on him.

“I can’t tell you how many different sounds we listened to with Joakim Sundström and the sound team. There are so many levels of sound going on within this scene — different air vents, different tones, the deep rumble of a lift coming up and disappearing. I love also the moment of silence between them when it gets really quiet. If people are eating popcorn in the cinema, they are going to have to stop eating at that moment.

“There was a bit of dialogue at the end of the scene where Harry got quite angry with Adam. But it just didn’t feel right in the end, it felt like it was pushing it too far in one direction.”

Adam comes out to his mother in the kitchen

The scene: Returning to his childhood home in Sanderstead, Croydon, for the second time, Adam finds his mum alone. Over tea and flapjacks in the kitchen, he tells her that he is gay. Her discomfort and judgmental attitude make for an uncomfortable encounter.

Haigh: “What is important about this scene is that it is doing two things. It is about a son telling his mother that he is gay, but it is also about an adult living now being reminded of what it felt like to be gay in the 1980s. I remember growing up at that time [Haigh was born in 1973] and how Adam’s mum feels is how everybody thought about gay people. It was a rough time to be gay, and suddenly Adam is back there again - all this icky pain starts to bubble up as his mum is talking.

“I didn’t want to demonise the mother. It is clear to me, and Claire plays it exactly like this, that she absolutely adores her son. But she lives in a time when her opinions have been formed and forged by the culture she lives in. Claire knew she had to be that person from the ’80s, and she absolutely threw herself into how her character would have felt. It’s a hard thing to do, and she did it beautifully.

“The role of tea is paramount and we talked a lot about it. When does the mother pour? When do they just hold their cups? When does Adam play with the flapjacks? They’re all fundamental to understanding the subtext. The mother has made flapjacks, something he always loved as a kid, and at the end she decides not to eat them. That’s quite brutal, as if this beautiful, nostalgic thing has been fundamentally altered.

“Costume designer Sarah Blenkinsop wanted all the costumes to have texture. You know what the teal velour tracksuit Claire wears in this scene feels like to touch, and that is another way to drag you back into the past. The whole film is trying to find ways to transport us back to a past, and if your mother had worn something like that, it would be something that you would always remember. The costumes and the way the house is decorated are to remind the audience we are in the middle of the 1980s.

“The house we shot in was not a big house. It’s a small, semi-detached house with a whole crew in there trying to film the scene. But I love the limitations because it means no-one can be in the room apart from you, the actors, the camera [operator] and the boom op. Everyone else is away, and it makes it feel so intimate.”

Adam and Harry go to the Royal Vauxhall Tavern

The scene: After having sex in Adam’s apartment, Adam and Harry go to a nightclub. There they drink, dance and snort ketamine. The evening becomes dreamlike and euphoric as the drug kicks in. They kiss passionately on the dancefloor.

Haigh: “Before this, there is a beautiful moment with Adam and his dad where you feel a deep connection and that something has been solved between them. There is a lightness to Adam at this point; a burden has been lifted and he wants to go out and show the world he’s in the early stages of a romantic relationship.

“I used to go to the Vauxhall Tavern all the time in the 1990s. There was a night called Duckie on Saturday night, which I was always going to. I lived in nearby Kennington at the time and it was a special place. It was an alternative venue that played such a wide range of music, so for me it felt the only choice to shoot in.

“Club scenes are difficult to get right, and the only way to get them right is to feel like you are in a club — that it’s late at night, you’re sweating and you’ve been dancing too long. So we played music for ages, and everyone was dancing before the camera was even rolling. We shot during the day in the height of summer with 150 people, so it was really hot and sweaty. But it needed to be loud and feel like you were being pushed from one side to another.

“The lighting in the club was limited, so we put in lots of vibrant pinks and deep purples. There is something sexy and dark and erotic about that colour scheme that speaks to gay clubs of the past. The scene feels so different from the rest of the film, but it also recalls colours that we use elsewhere. I love how the lighting scheme develops and how we start to make it stranger and a little bit uncomfortable.

“I don’t think we planned the shot where Adam and Harry kiss, with the light streaming behind them. But I wanted them to kiss each other and the light was behind them and it felt like such a magical moment. It’s like the whole world disappears around them and you’re just focusing on this beautiful, sensual, wondrous moment. They’re gay people in the safe space of a queer club and they can be exactly who they are, in public.

“There’s no point pretending the club scene is not associated with drug-taking — it has been since the dawn of time. You may as well be matter-of-fact about that, rather than try to make a moral argument.”

Adam and his parents go to the High Hat diner

The scene: Sensing their time together is drawing to a close, Adam goes with his parents to an American-themed diner he enjoyed visiting as a child. There they ask about how they died, before departing.

Haigh: “I knew there would have to be a goodbye scene. This film would make no sense if the parents were constantly going to be there. They’ve come back to help Adam, and he has got to the stage where he doesn’t need them anymore.

“Beginning the scene with ‘If I Could See (Through The Eyes Of A Child)’ by Patsy Cline was a bit of a random choice. I wanted a song that spoke to the Americana of the location — a theme restaurant in a brutalist shopping centre that was actually a TGI Fridays. When I was a kid, the height of glamour was going to a Happy Eater or Little Chef by the side of a motorway, which were the British version of American diners. The most exciting moments from when you were young can be so strange when you look back at them.

“I love the triangular composition, where you see all three heads. You’ve got the parents on both sides of Adam, helping him move forward like angels on his shoulder. They’re like an extension of Adam’s mind, and of course you could see the film that way if you wanted to - that all of this is only existing within his head.

“We had a lot of questions about how the parents would vanish. I wanted it to be simple because that is what happens when you lose someone. We used an optical effect to have the light in their eyes gently fade. And then they are gone, and it’s just Adam alone with three milkshakes on the table and nobody else around him.

“Crying on camera is a strange thing — it has to feel real and honest or it looks like it’s been forced. With Andrew, there was no holding him back; there was nothing he could do but cry in that moment. It was an emotional scene to shoot and it took some stamina. We spent a whole day on it, and half of the crew were crying.

“Emilie Levienaise-Farrouch did a wonderful job with the music. She was smart in saying we didn’t want much in this scene, and that overplaying it would make it far too sentimental. It is on the edge of sentimentality anyway, but you’ve got to stay on that edge; you can’t fall over the top of it. It was a real balancing act, and I think the way her score builds and shifts and rises is really powerful.”'

#Emilie Levienaise-Farrouch #Andrew Haigh #All of Us Strangers #Andrew Scott #Paul Mescal #Jamie Bell #Claire Foy #Royal Vauxhall Tavern #Sarah Blenkinsop #Jamie Ramsay #Joakim Sundström #Patsy Cline #If I Could See (Through The Eyes Of A Child)

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genevieveetguy · 2 months

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. I was too scared to let you in. But I'm here with you.

All of Us Strangers, Andrew Haigh (2023)

#Andrew Haigh #Andrew Scott #Paul Mescal #Jamie Bell #Claire Foy #Carter John Grout #Jamie Ramsay #Emilie Levienaise Farrouch #Jonathan Alberts #2023

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sesiondemadrugada · 1 year

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Living (Oliver Hermanus, 2022).

#living #living (2022)#oliver hermanus #bill nighy #tom burke #jamie ramsay #chris wyatt #helen scott #andrea stern #sarah kane #sandy powell #alldin dauti

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robynsassenmyview · 2 months

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Not only the lonely

"Not only the lonely", a review of Andrew Haigh's 'All of us strangers'.

DINNER for three with Adam (Andrew Scott), his dad (Jamie Bell) and mum (Claire Foy) in a scene from All of Us Strangers. WHAT WOULD YOU do if you visited your childhood home, and your parents, as young as they were when you were a small child, opened the door, and recognised you immediately? Only, you’re still you in the here and now and have lived, aged and erred, for some decades in their…

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badgaymovies · 2 years

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See How They Run (2022)

See How They Run by #TomGeorge starring #SamRockwell and #SaoirseRonan, "Light as a feather and perhaps a bit undernourished in the narrative department...this is a thorough charmer", Now reviewed on MyOldAddiction.com

TOM GEORGE Bil’s rating (out of 5): BBB.5 USA, 2022. Searchlight Pictures, DJ Films. Screenplay by Mark Chappell. Cinematography by Jamie Ramsay. Produced by Gina Carter, Damian Jones. Music by Daniel Pemberton. Production Design by Amanda McArthur. Costume Design by Odile Dicks-Mireaux. Film Editing by Gary Dollner, Peter Lambert Production was delayed on this film thanks to Disney’s taking over…

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axelsagewrites · 8 months

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Main Masterlist Here

House of the Dragon Masterlist Here

Warnings/Guides

【P】Platonic【P】 🆇Smut 18+🆇

Request Line Up and Request Rules

♡ Jon Snow ♡

🆇What he's like in bed🆇

Blind date

🆇Milady🆇

🆇Home Alone🆇

🆇Price of My Secrecy 🆇

Relationship Moodboard

🆇Couldn't Resist🆇

♡ Robb Stark ♡

Best Friend

Marriage night

🆇Dream🆇 🆇part two🆇

Frey Girl 🆇part two🆇

🆇I miss you🆇

Cloak

Honey Cakes (cloak part two or standalone)

Comfort

Sweet Girl

🆇NSFW Alphabet🆇

🆇Good girl🆇

Yearbook

Don't Die For Me

🆇Little Secret🆇

🆇Can't Catch a Break🆇

Goodnight Dear Husband

♡ Sandor Clegane ♡

Most People Say Goodbye Part One - Part Two

🆇Brat🆇

♡ Beric Dondarrian ♡

Home

♡ Thoros of Myr ♡

Favourite Friend

♡ Brienne of Tarth ♡

【P】Queen in the North and South【P】

♡Ned Stark♡

🆇MiLord🆇

🆇Wife🆇

♡Ramsay Bolton♡

🆇My Father Would Kill Me🆇

🆇Catch You🆇

🆇How Far Would You Go🆇

🆇Appreciate You🆇

🆇Bath🆇

🆇Little Mouse🆇

♡Roose Bolton♡

Perhaps

Not Yet

♡Edmure Tully♡

【P】Who We Call Family【P】

My Queen My Love

♡Theon Greyjoy♡

Dream of Sweet Memories

🆇Give it back🆇

♡Sansa Stark♡

Roommates

🆇NSFW Alphabet🆇

🆇What's This?🆇

Surprise Visit

♡Podrick Payne♡

🆇Praise🆇

♡Daenereys Targaryen♡

🆇My Queen🆇

♡Jamie Lannister♡

🆇Extra Credit🆇

♡Oberyn Martell♡

🆇Duty🆇

♡Margaery Tyrell♡

🆇Ropes🆇

♡Cersei♡

🆇Morning🆇

♡Tormund♡

🆇Real Man🆇

🆇Use your words🆇

♡ Yara Greyjoy ♡

Flirting

Preferences/Multicharacter

🆇Company🆇 - Yara and Ellaria threesome

🆇What they're like in bed🆇 – Robb, Jon, Sandor, Podrick

How they react to teasing – all

🆇What They're Like in Bed🆇 – Margaery, Sansa, Danny, Yara

Share pt1 🆇Competition pt2🆇 🆇Wait p3🆇 - Robb and Jon

🆇Hook ups🆇 - Theon and Jon

Love Languages - Jon, Robb, Bran, Tormund, Podrick, Oberyn

Thanks for any support I appreciate it all xoxo Sage

Dividers from here and here from @saradika

Post topper made on Canva

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queer-cosette · 2 years

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I think Gordon Ramsey should be allowed to hunt Jamie Oliver for sport.

#coco speaks #gordon ramsay #jamie oliver

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scenesandscreens · 1 month

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All of Us Strangers (2023)

Director - Andrew Haigh, Cinematography - Jamie D. Ramsay

"I know I was never good at saying it-I couldn't get the words out. But I do love you, very much. Somehow even more now that I know you."

#scenesandscreens #jamie bell #claire foy #carter john grout #ami tredrea #andrew haigh #jamie d. ramsay #andrew scott #paul mescal #all of us strangers

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whatjaswatched · 2 months

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I watched All of Us Strangers on Tuesday night.

It took me a while to truly digest it - to sit with it and process.

This film made me feel like my heart was in my throat, and I left the cinema with puffy, red eyes.

Andrew Scott is a stellar actor. He uses every single part of himself in every single scene. I’ve never seen anyone convey so much, so silently.

This is the first time I had seen Paul Mescal in anything, and he was truly beautiful. I can’t wait to see what he does next.

Overall, the film was incredible. But expect to be distraught.

#all of us strangers #andrew scott #paul mescal #claire foy #jamie bell #strangers #taichi yamada #andrew haigh #jamie d. ramsay

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sevenpixels · 1 year

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Living (2022) dir. Oliver Hermanus

#living #oliver hermanus #bill nighy #aimee lou wood #alex sharp #dp: jamie ramsay #film stills #films #:')#that fifth still...#living 2022 #kazuo ishiguro #fyc: bill nighy!!!!!!

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ilikethisacompletelynormalamount · 6 months

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Cinematographer Jamie Ramsay shared a behind the scenes video from the filming of the club scene in All of Us Strangers with Andrew Scott (Adam) and Paul Mescal (Harry) featuring the song Death of a Party by Blur.

🎥 Jamiedramsaycinematography

tw flashing images

#andrew scott #paul mescal #andrew haigh #all of us strangers #jamie ramsay #blur #death of a party #flashing #tw flashing

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denimbex1986 · 1 month

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'There are certain kinds of films that really impact me emotionally. One genre is what I will call “Saddest Film I Ever Saw”, and weirdly the Brits seem to have almost cornered the market on this one.

If asked, I usually say the very saddest film I have ever seen is “Never Let Me Go”, the heart-rending British Sci Fi classic based on Nobel-prize winner Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel. Oh, and if that didn’t make you cry, with its trio of Oscar winners and nominees — Andrew Garfield, Carey Mulligan and Keira Knightly — trying to love and live before they are forced to sever their limbs (yep), then the Merchant-Ivory production of Ishiguro’s “The Remains of the Day” has to.

Or your tear ducts have straight up dried up.

And, also from the UK, Saorise Ronan in the insanely sad Dystopian Sci Fi film, “How We Live Now”. Oh.my.garsh. There’s a new one: a distinctly British tale of late love, “All of Us Strangers”.

Gay Love and Heartbreak: Who Knew?

I have read a lot of reviews of this film, and, well, it had a nearly perfect IMDB Critics and Users score. I recently had a debate with some other people who are quite knowledgeable about film, about whether IMDB scores even matter. They eschew IMDB and use Letterbox’d — all the cool kids do, apparently (LOL).

Trust me, IMDB scores matter. Nearly every film I have ever seen that has had an IMDB score higher than 6.5 has been Good, and ones with a 6.8–7.1 score (they hardly ever (ever) go higher than that) are usually amazing.

What critics have keyed on is not that this is a beautiful tale of Gay love, of growing up Gay during the AIDS era and having parents who, in the words of The Fresh Prince, “just don’t understand” (or do they?), and then get killed in a car crash. Although all of that is present. Critics have keyed on the fact that “All of Us Strangers” is a timeless story of love and loss. Period. It could be any pair of people: old, young, gay, straight. It doesn’t matter, because Haigh’s and co-writer Taichi Yamada’s script and direction deliver the goods.

The Progress We Have Made

This film probably could not have been made, or been as successful even ten years ago. But today, when despite the forces of Evil arrayed against LGBTQ+ people all over the world, and especially in the US, Haigh presents us with an achingly beautiful love story between two people, who happen to be Gay Men. And it shows us, sans any prurience, gorgeous scenes of Gay Lovemaking that are the farthest thing from pornographic or even lurid.

And he does this by asking more narrative questions than he ever answers. Which I, personally, love.

Andrew Scott plays Adam, a screen-writer (how Meta) living in a nearly empty apartment building somewhere in London, at some point in time (the recent past? the near future?), who by a simple twist of fate ends up in the arms of Harry, played by Paul Mescal. I have loved Scott ever since his turn as a sexually active Anglican Priest in Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s amazing TV series “Fleabag”, and also love Mescal for, among other things, the critically lauded “Aftersun”.

A Queer Ghost Story?

What makes the narrative so fascinating is that, in parallel with this surprising tale of new love, Adam decides to return to his home town and finds his Mother and Father still living in the house in which he grew up, and still the same age they were thirty years ago right before they died in a car crash.

Why and how this impossible thing is happening provides much of the narrative force for “All of Us Strangers”, and Haigh inter-weaves the yearning love of Adam and Harry with Adam’s need to talk to his parents. You see, he needs to know if they knew he was Gay when he was in school (they did) and whether his Mum approves of the fact he likes Men, not Women (She does).

If you are fully willing to “suspend disbelief” (as Poet Coleridge famously said) then you are all in, and the only important thing is to see how Adam’s dialogues with his Mum (played by the excellent Claire Foy) and his Da (played by the under-rated Jamie Bell) will give them, and him some Peace.

It Gets Weird, then it Gets…

And why do they need that? Because, and this not a spoiler, they are all probably Dead. Jamie Ramsay’s gorgeous, yet unintrusive, Cinematography establishes a dream-like visual language in which we simply follow along both the Love Story and the Ghost Story, and really don’t want it to end.

But, alas, the story needs to go somewhere, and in the third reel Adam comes back to the Apartment Building to find Harry dead in Harry’s apartment. Again, not a spoiler, as it is never clear if any of the few characters in the film are actually alive in the first place.

As they lie together on his Bed, the shot of the two of them starts to shrink against a white background, eventually collapsing like a Neutron Star. Queue tears — bawling, really.

Question posed? Yes. Answered? Brilliantly, no.'

#Taichi Yamada #Strangers #Andrew Haigh #All of Us Strangers #Never Let Me Go #Keira Knightley #Carey Mulligan #Andrew Garfield #Saoirse Ronan #Paul Mescal #Andrew Scott #How We Live Now #Phoebe Waller-Bridge #Fleabag #Aftersun #Claire Foy #Jamie Bell #Jamie Ramsay

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