Strategy of Tragedy: Chen Overdoses on Drama in Sprawling Family Portrait
The most succinct aspect of Singaporean filmmaker Anthony Chen’s latest feature, We Are All Strangers, which focuses on a modern day working class family in a country usually only defined by its opulence, is the title. Despite the prolonged running time, clocking in at over two-and-a-half hours, which allows for what feels like an endless parade of unfortunate events, the pressure cooker approach superficially bonds us to its characters’ woes, but we really don’t know too much about them at all. They are indeed strangers. If Edward Yang is who Chen aims to emulate, this falls perilously short by comparison (and, in fact, feels more spiritually aligned with something like Father of the Bride Part II, 1995). With some significant trimming, there is the suggestion of a potentially powerful character study lurking in here, courtesy of Yeo Yann Yann (who appeared in Chen’s debut and best work to date, 2013’s Ilo Ilo), though she’s martyred here in service of a narrative which tends to use her for levity. It’s the third chapter in Chen’s thematic Growing Up trilogy, including his debut and Wet Season (2019). But it does not appear the best was saved for last.
Boon Kiat (Andi Lim) runs a Hokkein noodle shop on a bustling street in Singapore. He lives a modest life, caring for his twenty-one-year-old son Junyang (Koh Jia Ler, also of Ilo Ilo). While Boon desires to teach his somewhat aimless son his own trade, Junyang has instead decided to drop out of school and focus on military service, which he’s about to graduate from, wishing for greater things than his father’s business. However, Junyang has been secretly seeing nineteen-year-old Lydia (Regene Lim), an aspiring pianist about to take her college entrance exams. Working as a hostess at an adjacent stall to Boon is the outspoken Bee Hwa (Yeo Yann Yann), a woman who has grown tired of getting commission from peddling beer to aging clients, demeaningly referred to as a ‘beer auntie,’ and treated like an aging Las Vegas cocktail server. Boon courts Bee Hwa, and it’s not long before he asks for her hand in marriage. But when Lydia falls pregnant, both couples suddenly find themselves living in Boon’s two-bedroom apartment.
As the film unspools, we initially spend painstaking moments with Junyang and Lydia as they navigate a secret romance. However, there’s nothing exceptional about their courtship except as it reflects their mutual naïveté. Slowly, it appears Boon Kiat and Bee Hwa’s developing romance will intersect and collide with the younger couple, but there’s an immediate imbalance in these parallel relationships due to the inherent nuance established by Junyang’s father and step-mother. What feels like a melancholic, Douglas Sirk-ian scenario eventually begins to feel like the whole season of a soap opera sloppily condensed irrationally. Likewise, some stiff performances from supporting cast members, including Lydia’s cold mother (who is only defined by her devout religious obsession) enhance the film’s maudlin efforts despite the somewhat jarring attempt to feel cheery. It’s a film which has the same energy as a flippant meme advising depressed people to just go take a long walk and bask in the sunshine.
Lydia all but disappears from the proceedings, eclipsed by the raggedy, selfish behaviors of Junyang, who is not only immature and irresponsible, but quite stupid. His ignorance is eventually what hems up Bee Hwa, a woman he’d demeaned since his father had started dating her. Of course, circumstances force him to develop a new attitude, but it’s unclear what the final message in this trilogy wants to convey. We Are All Strangers is a film which operates on a stressful wavelength without any real moderation in tone, and thus its intended catharsis and resolution exists in a fantasy realm of schmaltz. Working class realities and economic disparity are not an excuse for hokum.
Reviewed on February 15th at the 2026 Berlin International Film Festival (76th edition) – Main Competition. 157 mins.
★★/☆☆☆☆☆
