In one of my book clubs, we watch a movie based on a book each year. Last year we watched All of Us Strangers. Because Taichi Yamada’s book of the same name was not on my radar, I did not read the book first. But I ended up watching the movie twice. (I thought I was supposed to watch it ahead of club, but the club was the viewing.) I also brought a Harry Potter-themed birthday cake because it was my birthday. See some OTHER post. This bit of lightheartedness was antithetical to the movie.

Andrew Scott (and Claire Foy) star in this very dysthymic and critically- and reviewer-acclaimed movie about a gay man who lives nearly alone in a new high-rise building when he finally meets one of his neighbors. Meanwhile, he discovers that his long-dead parents are still living in his old, family house and he’s able to visit them.

(Let’s just let you know that there are some full-on sex scenes in this movie.)

The hook is good, isn’t it? And the movie has a mysterious quality, where you are trying to figure out the reality of the set-up. What is going on? But it is mellow—really mellow—and is about being gay and coming out as much as it is about childhood trauma and death and loneliness. And success, I guess, too. A challenge to modern ideas of success. It is dark (low-light) and chill, slow lingering scenes full of sparse, meaningful dialogue.

It’s a good movie, but you have to be okay with whatever I just said and also ambiguous endings. And you have to be in the right mood to appreciate it (which I feel is harder and harder to come by–that mood in which one can absorb more difficult and awkward content–in the aftermath of the Pandemic and the current political reality). Yes, ambiguous ending. Purposefully. I actually disagreed with most people on the ending (which of course we discussed at book club) until we remembered one little thing. So it is one of those endings you can go over with your friends, change your mind about.

An art film that comes across like a student film.

Easy to sit around and discuss. More difficult to watch. But interesting and acclaimed.