With Concrete’s issue on sex and relationships coinciding with LGBTQ+ history month, All of Us Strangers (2023, Andrew Haigh) bridges both themes, bringing an important conversation to the foreground. It delves into the intricacies of human connection, love, and loss – set against the backdrop of queer identity and the enduring echoes of the past. 

It is easy to get caught up in the kaleidoscope of emotion stemming from physical connection. However, Adam (Andrew Scott), the central protagonist in All of Us Strangers, appears disconnected from this world. The film transforms sex and relationships into something spectral – a ghost story of profound loneliness, where the presence of love is overshadowed by an aching absence. 

The story follows Adam, a struggling screenwriter, as he negotiates loneliness and returns to his childhood home to forge a new relationship with his long-deceased parents as an adult. Meanwhile, Adam seemingly forges a new romance with Harry (Paul Mescal), who appears to be the only other resident in their otherwise hauntingly empty building. However, the film is not particularly concerned with the logic of the narrative – its dreamlike quality invites ambiguity. The story’s emotional resonance takes priority within the liminal space between reality and fantasy, allowing the minimalistic cast several deeply heartfelt moments. 

Shot on 35mm, the film uses an analogue palette for Adam’s parents’ home, creating a soft hue of nostalgia for something that never was. Departing from a recent tendency in modern queer films for the parents to express full embrace and understanding, Haigh opts for more raw and nuanced parental confrontations. The film drives home a message that one can feel like a ‘stranger’ in their own family, ‘coming out just puts a name to that difference that’s always been there’, as Harry states at one point. 

Yet, it is important to note that queerness in itself is not the root cause of Adam’s loneliness. Rather, it is societal prejudices that have made him feel different. The film affirms the idea that to be seen is to be loved, and being queer is just one facet of this. Adam’s parents may be confined to preconceptions of queerness from outdated ‘80s prejudices, but the film’s main fixation is on finding catharsis in the reconciliation behind this lack of understanding. Adam imagines conversations that he and many others don’t have the closure in replicating, thus providing solace to a queer audience who have perhaps yearned for something similar. His parents may not completely understand, but they can accept and see Adam. 

Meanwhile, Adam’s relationship with Harry provides a fleeting sense of connection in their full understanding of one another. Although, the real tragedy comes in the film’s ending in the finding that even their relationship was built only upon the false yearning for this reality. We can never truly know each other, but All of Us Strangers highlights the importance of the attempts for connection and the detrimental loneliness in the absence of human connectivity.