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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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ilikethisacompletelynormalamount · 4 months

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Emilie Levienaise-Farrouch's original score for All of Us Strangers is available now from Hollywood Records.

#andrew scott #paul mescal #all of us strangers #andrew haigh #original score #emilie levienaise-farrouch #Spotify

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bob-the-movie-man-film-reviews · 1 year

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Living (12): Quietly waiting for his mother to call him in.

#onemannsmovies review of "Living" (2022). #LivingMovie. Bill Nighy is immaculate in this touching and thought-provoking 50's tale. 4.5/5.

A One Mann’s Movies review of “Living” (2022). I had the joy of meeting Bill Nighy briefly in a London theatre and he is the epitomy of the English gentleman: calm, utterly polite and without displaying the slightest irritation for the many fans glad-handing him during his night out. In his manner, he seems like an actor from an earlier, more civilised age. And in “Living” he gets to play just…

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gacougnol · 2 years

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(Emilie Levienaise-Farrouch)

#FatCat Records #Ambient #modern classical #emilie levienaise-farrouch

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beneaththebrim · 1 year

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Brim’s favorite albums of 2022

In reverse order. First EPs, then LPs.

EPs:

10. A Sterling Murmuration | Zoon

Hazy shoegaze, nostalgic and soothing.

9. My Bestfriend’s House | Blue Hawaii

Dance-worthy! Was pleasantly surprised by the disco track at the beginning.

8. graves | Purity Ring

Standard Purity Ring fare, squealing croons atop haunting, euphoric synths.

7. SICK! | Earl Sweatshirt

A return of the meandering depressedcore hip hop we love. Dizzy and ephemeral soundscapes flit in and out like thoughts through an anxious mind.

6. La Ciudad de Dejamos | Fin del Mundo

Liquid guitars against balmy drumwork make for some really nice 90s-nostalgia shoegaze. Music like a cool summer night.

4 & 5. Kris, Perfect Order | KÅRP

Good ole dark Scandinavian synthpop. What would we do without you.

3. Ninety Three | Taylar Elizza Beth

Low key, lush hip-hop featuring Taylar Elizza Beth’s whispery vocals that float between rap and croon.

2. Raving Dahlia | Sevdaliza

Sevdaliza’s back with her signature inexorable smoky ballads. These tracks are a little dancier, a little heavier than those of her most recent album, though, while retaining her unique style.

1. Bloodline | Gabriels

(December 2021) Gabriels singlehandedly bringing back The Blues in the year of our lord 2021, why not? Meticulously vintage, with the agonized, raw-yet-finely-tuned vocal stylings of Jacob Lusk—one of the absolute best vocalists of our age, seriously. Southern gothic sin, baby.

Full albums:

27. Arkhon | Zola Jesus

It’s a Zola Jesus record, which means I like it. But I find myself never getting into any particular moment. Maybe it’ll take more time to sink in, maybe it’s just lacking stand-out tracks to anchor the album. Music like spelunking.

26. Entropy is the Mainline to God | The Veldt

The Veldt comes back rocking and rolling. I was hoping for something more shoegazy like their old stuff rather than the psychedelia-tinged 80’s metal sound they’ve got going here, but hell, it’s groovy!

25. Arrangements | Preoccupations

Previous album was a little one-note, but this one veers into some interesting spaces as it pushes and pulls with the distortion. Jaunty.

24. The Silence in Between | Bob Moses

Bouncin introspective dance music. It’s not original but it’s full of bops!

23. Loom | Uèle Lamore

Earthy yet ethereal blooms of instrumentation. Lovely to listen to, but for some reason lacks memorability.

22. Black Radio III | Robert Glasper

An eclectic tour de force featuring a stellar variety of guest spots atop Glasper’s production. Although a lot of tracks are fantastic, the album doesn’t quite cohere as a whole for me.

21. Once Twice Melody | Beach House

Beach House made a Beach House record, and it’s great. The same subdued, affectionate, dreamy sound we love.

20. 11 | Sault

The only Sault album I liked of the six they released this year ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ It’s excellent though, love the down-tempo jamminess of the instrumentation and the thoughtful, murmuring vocals.

19. Broken Hearts Club | Syd

Vaped torch songs for your local lesbian fuckboy to play in the background while getting down. Syd comes through once again.

18. Only After You Have Suffered | Jamire Williams

(December 2021) Contemplative, choppy jazz with phenomenal hip hop and operatic interludes. “Pause in His Presence” in particular is something else.

17. Kanawha Black | Nechochwen

Indigenous-made atmospheric folk/black metal. Expansive melodies invoking the Appalachian forests meld with the harsh vocal texture to create a space of reverence and awe.

16. EBM | Editors

Delivering on that punchy aughts-nostalgia stadium rock. Head boppin rhythms and gushy pop-punk hooks.

15. Laurel Hell | Mitski

Mellow sounds that swirl around the main maelstroms of the album, cracking at the seams and letting the rawness soak through.

14. Plastic Estate | Plastic Estate

Slick and infectious 80s-nostalgia new wave that you just gotta sing along to. Very special when the singer sinks into a baritone.

13. Cool It Down | Yeah Yeah Yeahs High-energy-yet-dreamy punky indiepop. Some great anthems on this one.

12. Too Much to Ask | Cheekface Cheeky pop-punk that’s like scrolling through a quality twitter funnyman’s feed. Hilarious and full of bops.

11. Exister | The Soft Moon

A cold counterpoint from the California goth scene, starts off slow before cranking up an onslaught of noise that thrums between industrial and darkwave. Angry and cathartic.

10. Ravage | Emilie Levienaise-Farrouch

Haunting and disturbed sounds from the French pianist/composer. A melding of dark ambient that wouldn’t be out of place in a horror movie, with crashing, harsh piano work.

9. Twenty Twenty Twenty Twenty One | Spencer Krug One of the best lyricists of the day, imo, reminiscent of Leonard Cohen. Every tug of Krug’s voice strains with emotion, and every turn he takes with the instrumentation on different albums is a welcome surprise, finding different ways to express his agonized sentimentality.

8. Giving the World Away | Hatchie Earnestly saccharine power-dreampop. Great album with some real bangers.

7. We’ve Been Going About This All Wrong | Sharon Van Etten Warm and husky, sad and poignant folk songs. Van Etten’s voice soars with transcendant emotion.

6. The Runner (Original Soundtrack) | Boy Harsher

Spooky and sleek darkwave, punctuated by a sparkly disco banger. Boy Harsher at the top of their form.

5. Angels & Queens - Part 1 | Gabriels

Jacob Lusk delivering that wonderful vintage, Nina Simone-esque vocal quality, with the opening tracks fast-forwarded from last year’s bluesy EP to some funky 70’s soul. Gorgeous and blue.

4. Ever Crashing | SRSQ

Gushy dark California gothy dreampop. Infectiously synthy, powerful vocals. Lush songs for a heart that’s itching for summers long past.

3. Stay Close to Music | Mykki Blanco

A humble confessional, at times diving back into the idiosyncratic rapping style of Blanco’s more dance-y earlier releases, at times plunging into an ethereal wash of sound.

2. Semblance | MorMor

There is something magical about MorMor’s tissue-paper-delicate voice. Gentle, sensitive, cathartic. Music for letting go when you so want to hold on.

1. Pigments | Dawn Richard & Spencer Zahn

Lovely. Sublime. Spacey. Sprawling. Meandering and melancholy pockets of plaintive yearning. Music that takes you on a journey and leaves your heart aching for more.

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robynsassenmyview · 3 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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danbenzvi · 4 months

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On The Jukebox: "All Of Us Strangers (Original Motion Picture Score)"

Original music composed by Emilie Levienaise-Farrouch.

#all of us strangers #emilie levienaise-farrouch

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maquina-semiotica · 2 years

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Emilie Levienaise-Farrouch, "Scale of Volatility"

#Emilie Levienaise-Farrouch #Spotify

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culturedarm · 2 years

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This week Julia Reidy dispatches foggy dreamscapes and folkish maladies through fingerpicked guitar and autotuned vocals, Carlos Niño expands the spiritual space collages of Actual Presence in the company of friends, Emilie Levienaise-Farrouch embodies the ravages of grief and memory, and Afrorack imbues kosmische and techno with staggered basslines and East African polyrhythms. Tracks by Yama Warashi, 700 Bliss, Svaneborg Kardyb, Valentina Magaletti, They Hate Change, and M.I.A. complete the roundup of best new music.

https://culturedarm.com/tracks-of-the-week-28-05-22/

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ljesak · 2 months

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🎶 Emilie Levienaise-Farrouch - Harry

#digital art #art #furry #anthro #digital artist #artists on tumblr #digital painting #furry art #ljesak #ljesakart #laurie #ocs #personal

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byneddiedingo · 2 months

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Paul Mescal and Andrew Scott in All of Us Strangers (Andrew Haigh, 2023)

Cast: Andrew Scott, Paul Mescal, Jamie Bell, Claire Foy. Screenplay: Andrew Haigh, based on a novel by Taichi Yamada. Cinematography: Jamie Ramsay. Production design: Sarah Finlay. Film editing: Jonathan Alberts. Music: Emilie Levienaise-Farrouch.

Movies are not poems. Cinema is based on externalities, on the documentary impulse to record and preserve that which is happening outside of ourselves. Poetry is interior, a response to the impulse to record and preserve the emotional and intellectual experiences produced within us by the outside world. Making movies tends to be communal, writing poems to be private. And yet the two are always superimposing themselves on each other -- on the one hand we have poetry readings, and on the other the solitary viewing of movies in our living rooms and bedrooms. And from the beginning, moviemakers have striven for the poetic, just as poets have always tried to record the seen and heard as pathways to the emotion and the idea. Andrew Haigh's All of Us Strangers is the product of the attempt to find something like an objective correlative for a variety of emotions -- loneliness, desire, regret -- and ideas -- the centrality of family relationships, the nature of sexuality, the persistence of the past. Haigh finds it in a ghost story, a well-worn trope for literature and film, and tantalizes us into questioning how much of the experience depicted in the film is external and how much is interior -- whether Adam (Andrew Scott) actually encounters the ghosts or is projecting his psychological disorder onto the world. One critic wrote that she approached the ending of the film hoping that we would find out that what we have been watching is actually a story Adam has written. But that would have been on the order of the banal "it was all a dream" conclusion that has been foisted on us too often. Haigh wisely leaves us with questions -- maybe too many for the film's own good. His aim is to unsettle us, in the way the loose ends of a poem, the lines and images that don't quite resolve into explicit statements, linger with us. It helps that the movie is perfectly cast, with actors who can translate longing and loss into visible experience. If you've ever been cautioned about a movie to not take it too literally, this is one of those times.

#All of Us Strangers #Andrew Haigh #Paul Mescal #Andrew Scott

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denimbex1986 · 2 months

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'The 2023 film, 'All of Us Strangers' enchanted festival enthusiasts. However, the absence of an Oscar nomination posed a separate challenge. Now, let's take a closer look at this film that has garnered critics' acclaim, raced from one award to another, and secured a special place in the hearts of moviegoers.

'All of Us Strangers', directed by Andrew Haigh and starring Andrew Scott and Paul Mescal, unfolds the story of a gay couple.

Adam (Andrew Scott) is a solitary television scriptwriter living an isolated life in London. Despite initially hesitating to invite his drunk neighbor Harry (Paul Mescal) into his home, Adam eventually gives in to Harry's persistence. As their relationship progresses, they navigate through various events and embark on a life together. However, Adam is eventually confronted with Harry's death, forcing him to sever ties with his reality. Throughout this process, the ghosts of his family guide him. After accepting Harry's death, Adam embraces his spirit, and they peacefully fall asleep together, lost in a beam of light accompanied by music as the screen fades to black.

Scott portrays Adam, a struggling scriptwriter inspired by his past, grappling with a screenplay as things haven't been going well for him lately.

The film initially focuses on Adam's face reflected in the windows of the flat in the twilight of London. Adam immerses himself in the music of his childhood and sifts through a box of family treasures connecting him to the distant past. However, he appears detached – in the echoing, neat but cold apartment, almost empty in a Ballardian tower block, emphasizing his loneliness.

A gentle relationship blossoms between Adam and his neighbor Harry, the only other occupant of the building.

During a research visit for a script Adam is writing, he goes to his childhood home in the suburbs of Dorking. There, he encounters his deceased parents (Claire Foy and Jamie Bell), who remain unchanged, unaged, exactly as they were 30 years ago when they died. Scott balances the film's supernatural elements with emotional equilibrium, and the entire cast complements him in this harmony.

As the bond between Adam and Harry strengthens into a potential future together, Adam is continually drawn to his unresolved childhood trauma of the past.

Time doesn't necessarily heal all wounds. Instead, it makes them deeper and more debilitating. Adam can't rewrite the moment his parents were killed in a car accident. However, he can recognize them not as a bullied and beaten child but as an adult gay man.

The excellent, highly sensitive screenplay is adapted from the novel "Strangers" (1987) by Japanese author Taichi Yamada.

The 2023 film is not the first adaptation of the book; the initial one was Nobuhiko Obayashi's 'The Discarnates' in 1988. However, Haigh has left his mark on the story.

The use of the real childhood home for scenes between Adam and his parents emphasizes the emotional connection between the director and the material.

There are clues in this film that connect director Haigh to his previous works: it establishes a link with his second feature, the gay romance 'Weekend.' It also shares the sense of a window to the past and the cyclical nature of time, disrupting lives with the discovery of a lost lover's body preserved in ice, as seen in '45 Years.'

On the initial viewing, we can guarantee that you won't escape the film's heart-wrenching emotional impact.

We believe that watching the film once is not enough to fully grasp it. The complexity of Emilie Levienaise-Farrouch's composed music harmoniously strengthens the film's meaning. The mastery of Jonathan Alberts' seamless editing subtly guides us through parallel timelines and simultaneous moments in Adam's life within a cityscape. In essence, we can say the film's success is a collaborative effort.'

#Weekend #Andrew Haigh #All of Us Strangers #Taichi Yamada #Strangers #The Discarnates #Jonathan Alberts #Emilie Levienaise-Farrouch #Andrew Scott #Paul Mescal #Claire Foy #Jamie Bell

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