I thought of the great films of Luis Bunuel as I watched Andrew Haigh’s unsettling and profoundly moving film ALL OF US STRANGERS, now playing at some Chicago theatres. Bunuel had the ability to blur the line between reality and dream. Watching ALL OF US STRANGERS is like experiencing a dream. 

            The setting is London, but it is only seen through Adam, the central character’s, window. Even then, the light seems supernatural, fitting for a film about ghosts of a sort—ghosts we conjure up. Adam is a screenwriter in his mid-forties who is supposedly one of only two residents in a high-rise apartment building. Is the building realty empty or is Adam, in his solipsism, oblivious to everyone else? We never seen him get beyond the first line of his screenplay, which is to be based on his suburban childhood. Instead, in states of writer’s block and depression, he lies on his sofa, eats, naps, and looks through mementos of his past. To get the creative juices flowing, Adam takes a trip back to his home town. He wanders out onto the heath and sees a man who turns and smiles at him. Is this the overture to some sort of sexual encounter (London heaths are sexually charged place, particularly for gay men.)? Later, Andrew and the man meet up outside of a liquor store. The man, it turns out is Adam’s father. Adam follows him back to his childhood home and reunites with his mother. Oddly, both parents are younger than Andrew and dressed like they belong in the 1980s. We also know that Andrew’s parents died in a car crash when Andrew was a boy. Clearly Andrew has entered an imagined time warp.

            At first, the communication between Andrew and his parents is a bit guarded. The parents seem more surprised to see Andrew than he is at seeing them. As Andrew seems to travel back and forth from London to his suburban home, from present to a merging of past and present, the visits get more affectionate, more intense. In one scene, forty-something Andrew, in a pair of red kid’s pajamas, asks to get in bed with his parents like a scared child in the middle of the night. Moments like this could be silly, but Andrew Scott and Claire Foy and Jamie Bell, who play his parents, act the moment with such conviction that we accept its emotional power as we question its reality. The film makes us accept that things can be emotionally real without being literally real. Tellingly, Adam asks his mother, “Is it real?” to which she responds, “Does it feel real?” Everything in the film feels real.

            Through imagination or dream, Andrew is given the opportunity to talk to his parents about the life he has lived since their death. Like a 1980s mother who has been told that her son is gay, she worries about AIDS and the fact that he will never have a happy domestic life. “Things are different now,” he responds. But Andrew is alone and not particularly happy. He also suffers from nightmares.

            Andrew’s other crucial encounter is with Harry, seemingly the only other inhabitant of the building. Harry, drunk, knocks on Adam’s door and offers drink and sex, which Adam politely turns down. Later Adam does invite Harry to his apartment, and they quickly establish a real intimacy. Harry is sweet, lost, and a bit mysterious. Adam is a sexual novice and shy about showing his body, but Harry introduces him to true physical and emotional closeness with another person. 

In 2011, Haigh made WEEKEND about two men who meet on a Friday night and quickly establish a powerful connection. Andrew and Harry make the same sort of connection. Under Haigh’s direction, Andrew Scott and Paul Mescal capture the intensity of the bond that develops.  

            SPOILER ALERT. The ending is bittersweet. Having said farewell to his parents, a closure he has needed since childhood, Adam goes into Harry’s apartment and discovers that the young man drank himself to death the night Adam did not welcome him into his apartment. Yet there is a living Harry standing in the kitchen. At the end, Adam is in bed with Harry. “Is it real?” “Does it feel real?” Can Adam transfer that love to a real human being?

            ALL OF US STRANGERS is filled with visual imagery. Mirrors play a crucial role. We often see Harry reflected in a mirror or through a window. Most of the film is indoors in confined spaces.    

            Andrew Scott has for a couple of decades been one of England’s and Ireland’s best stage and screen actors. He has the amazing ability to be funny and anguished at the same time. Few actor’s faces are as expressive as his. I can’t think of another actor who could capture the wide emotional range that the role of Adam demands. Claire Foy and Jamie Bell are touching as Adam’s parents. Paul Mescal has a tricky role as a man who is deeply wounded but capable of love and joy. He and Scott make a great team. 

            At the end of the film, we hear Frankie Goes to Hollywood’s classic song, “The Power of Love.” The song celebrates romantic/sexual love. ALL OF US STRANGERS extends the meaning to the love of parents—even parents that have been gone for decades—as well as the love of a partner. It reminds us that we have to deal with our feelings for our parents before we can truly love someone else. This film will haunt you for a long time.

            There are no phantasms in Dan Levy’s Good Grief now streaming on Netflix. In fact, the film looks very much like a typical romantic comedy. The London and Paris settings are beautiful and opulent. The leading character is affluent enough to take his best friends to Paris. The leading character meets a handsome Frenchman who is immediately attracted to him. Levy takes the trappings of romcoms and gives them a different emphasis. Good Grief is about grief, of course, but it is more about the stresses and strains of adult friendships for a single gay man.

            The film begins with Marc and Oliver’s Christmas party at their beautiful Kensington home. The couple, who seem to be totally in love, have been together for fifteen years. Oliver is a best-selling writer of children’s books which have been successful enough to be turned into hit movies. Marc was an artist, but has devoted his career to illustrating Oliver’s book and helping to manage his career. Oliver had to make an early exit from their party because of an upcoming book signing in Paris. The cab he leaves in has a fatal accident.

            Marc’s best friends, Sophie (Ruth Negga) and Oliver (Himesh Patel) spend the next year helping Marc through overwhelming grief. Oliver and Marc were lovers briefly before Marc met Oliver, but have remained close friends. Marc still seems to be in love with Oliver. Sophie is ebullient, but feckless. She keeps sabotaging her relationship with boyfriend Sebastian because “it’s too safe.” At the end of a year of grief, Marc discovers that Oliver was going to take time off from their relationship to deal with his feelings for someone else and that Oliver had leased an apartment in Paris to meet with his new lover. Before the lease runs out of the apartment, Marc takes his friends to stay for a few days in the lavish apartment.

            The Paris weekend leads to many moments of truth for the three friends, whose relationships are altered by the experience. Marc gets to confront Oliver’s young lover and to spend a romantic evening with handsome Theo. If the friends are not as close after the weekend, Marc at least is able to start his life over.

            Grief makes one solipsistic and there are moments when Marc’s lamenting become tiresome. Still, Good Grief offers an interesting picture of a man who has to deal not only with the loss of his husband, but also with the loss of illusions about his marriage. At the end, he is able to turn his grief and his feelings about his friends into art.

            Dan Levy is producer, writer, director and star of his films, making him a kind of young Woody Allen. The script is too talky at times, but Levy’s immense charm as a performer keeps the film light. Ruth Negga’s hyper Sophie and Himesh Patel’s sometimes lugubrious Thomas are excellent foils for Levy. This is his first feature film as writer/director. It’s an impressive debut.