Starring: Andrew Scott, Paul Mescal, Jamie Bell, Claire Foy
Distributor: Fox-Searchlight-Disney
Runtime: 105 mins. Reviewed in Jan 2024
Reviewer: Fr Peter Malone msc
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A screenwriter drawn back to his childhood home enters into a fledgling relationship with a mysterious neighbour as he then discovers his parents appear to be living just as they were on the day they died, 30 years before.
Referring to everyone as strangers to one another, strangers in our relationships, this is a melancholy title. The screenplay, based on a novel by Japanese author Taichi Yamada, was written by Andrew Haigh. Haigh has had a successful career writing and directing screenplays that probe same-sex relationships (Weekend, Looking). He also wrote and directed the insightful film about an aged married couple, 45 Years.
Irish actor Andrew Scott has had a substantial career since he was young – Moriarty to Benedict Cumberbatch’s detective in Sherlock, C in the James Bond film, Spectre, and the ‘hot’ priest in Phoebe Waller’s comedy series, Fleabag. This is one of his best and most moving performances.
He plays Adam, in his 40s, alone and lonely, a gay man who has had not had an emotional relationship. He is a screenwriter, probing his own history in his writing. Scott makes Adam someone whom we respond to with care, concerned about his loneliness. He occupies a room in a huge new high-rise apartment block in London, but the other flats are still empty. He encounters Harry, (Mescal, from Normal People, Aftersun, Foe, Gladiator 2) at his door but Adam closing the door on him. However, we know Harry will persevere and something will develop between the two.
While watching the film, the key word that emerges in our consciousness is ‘empathy’. Adam is such a pleasing and sympathetic character who invites our empathetic attitude towards him as a person, and for him as a lonely man, and a man with homosexual orientation. The theme the film explores is what is ‘being in love’ for Adam.
This is a question posed to him by his mother. And the appearance of Adam’s father and mother takes us into a different realm in the storytelling. They have been dead for 30 years, sadly killed in a car crash when Adam was 12. But, as he looks at the box of photos from the past, he has an overwhelming desire to visit the house again, takes the train, walks the street, encounters his parents, goes into the house, sits down and talks with them. They are played effectively by Bell and Foy.
So happy is Adam rediscovering his parents, that he goes back, encountering his mother alone. She innocently asks about his girlfriend, he tells her about his orientation, her being rather bewildered, not knowing how to talk with her son. In his next visit, he encounters his father who has been told by his wife about Adam and mentions that she needs to rearrange a few things in her mind. What follows is a powerful discussion about Adam and his experiences as a young boy, bullied at school, his father realising the orientation and the question between them of why his father never spoke to him about the issues, and why he never spoke to his father.
These revisits to his parents have a disturbing effect on Adam but Harry is there as support for him. The line between fantasy and reality disappears. (There is a drug sequence which seems unnecessary to the plot development leading to an MA classification.) These ghostly themes continue with some farewells, and a sad ending.
In these years of discussion about same-sex relationships, talk about blessings of same-sex unions, this is an empathetic film for a wide audience.
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