Film Review: ‘All of You’ is a Poorly Executed High-Concept Romantic Drama

William Bridges’ All of You seems to follow in the footsteps of the high-concept formal daring of Alain Resnais’ Je t’aime, je t’aime, in the sense that, after an introductory scene explaining to the audience the state of the world and the framing device its protagonists, Laura (Imogen Poots), and Simon (Brett Goldstein), are about to embark on, the movie then stops explaining anything to us, as it travels through time. It trusts the audience is intelligent enough to understand the construction being made by editor Victoria Boydell, without any title cards to showcase exactly where we are in the twelve-year period it tracks. However, unlike Resnais’ film, Bridges and Goldstein (who co-wrote the screenplay) adopt a linear structure in tracking the story, from its inciting incident to its hopefully tear-jerking conclusion.

The incident occurs right at the top of the movie, where Laura takes a test offered by a company named “Soul Connex.” The film is set in the distant future, yet not so far removed from our current reality, and the test claims to identify a participant’s true soulmate. Simon does not believe in the test and has developed a profound affection for Laura. That being said, he still supports her when she decides to take it, going so far as to even pay for it. We know what this likely insinuates, but Laura’s true love is not Simon. We don’t see who she’s matched with, because the film immediately cuts to several months (or years? It’s never really clear, but that’s the point) later, where Laura and Simon are still connecting, but aren’t romantically involved.

In those months, Bridges and Goldstein fill in the gaps by making it clear that Laura has believed in the test and matched with Lukas (Steven Cree), who obviously doesn’t have the same spark she has with Simon, but isn’t a bad person at all. The two develop a family together, and Simon is even encouraged to be a part of their lives along the way. He tries to establish a romantic relationship with Laura’s best friend, Andrea (Zawe Ashton), but it doesn’t feel the same as when he is with Laura. Predictably, the movie goes in the direction you expect, Resnais-esque framing device be damned. I won’t spoil it, but it’s at that point where All of You, which explores some pretty interesting themes, begins to fall apart and never recovers.

The movie begins to stay in cyclical platitudes involving a “Will they? Won’t they?” relationship between Laura and Simon, and never does anything of note with this relatively intriguing concept: a test that scientifically proves a person’s “true soulmate” is actively scrutinized when “true love” does not need a test. If Laura trusts her feelings, she would not be with Lukas, as lovely as he may be. The same can be said for Simon, who desperately feels that the only person he can truly love is Laura, and consistently makes that clear when he is in front of her, as much as she wants to ignore this inextricable fact. Instead of exploring this throughline, Bridges keeps his screenplay in a repetitive position, where Laura, who doesn’t want to betray Lukas’ trust, begins to listen to her inner feelings and develops a romantic relationship with Simon. Yet, she consistently has doubts and tries to pull out, as much as she feels her life would improve if she discarded the test results entirely and just said yes to what her feelings conveyed.

There’s a variation of the “Let’s cheat on Lukas, but I don’t know if I should” scene playing – and I kid you not – at least ten times during the movie’s middle section. Bridges has no intention of exploring what this psychologically means for Laura, and the nature of the Soul Connex test as a whole. This is a universe that attempts to sell its clients true love, but is it really true love when, in the end, it is dictated by an algorithm? We live in an era where AI is gradually making its way into our everyday lives, whether we want it to or not. It seems to be the perfect vehicle for Bridges and Goldstein to discuss how greedy CEOs want machines to think in the place of humans, and eventually replace the core of what makes us all living, breathing beings: emotion. Laura would rather put her blind trust into a nonexistent entity than listen to the very fabric of what makes her human. That’s a terrifying prospect, but the movie doesn’t delve into any of that beyond introducing it as a potential thematic thread.

No matter how enveloping and often poetic the visual language of Benoit Soler may be, the movie fails to connect with the characters on a deeper level and understand their yearning, despite its fragmented structure, which Boydell edits rather solidly. As messy and complex as the narrative of Je t’aime, je t’aime gets when the protagonist begins to travel through time, we peer into the intimacy of the characters at a much deeper level than the linear fragmentations of Boydell’s cuts in All of You, which sets up an intelligently constructed drama with urgent issues on the state of the world, but when it reaches its second half and starts to repeat scenes we’ve seen before, one has to wonder exactly what Bridges wants to say in this beautiful-looking, but thematically empty high-concept romantic drama.

With all that said and done, though, both Poots and Goldstein have palpable chemistry together. The latter, in particular, is notably effective in segments where we sit with Simon as he realizes this love he has for Lucy isn’t going away anytime soon. There’s a particular scene where he sits alone, at a table, drinking his pain away, and it’s the most effective I’ve seen Goldstein tap into raw, vulnerable emotions. His face – and body language – convey a litany of intense feelings that he has carried with him ever since he met and immediately fell in love with Lucy. It’s the closest the movie comes to actively addressing the multitude of themes it aims to convey, such as the replacement of human emotion by algorithmic matchmaking. However, it doesn’t delve deeply enough into them to extract meaning from these specific fragments of both Lucy and Simon’s lives.

When the movie eventually concludes on a coda that’s relatively easy to guess, the impact one has in watching All of You is pretty limited, despite the alluring photography and consistently solid work from its lead actors. The only thing All of You will encourage viewers to do is seek out Resnais’ Je t’aime, je t’aime and see what a high-concept, sci-fi-driven romantic drama should strive to achieve. By the end of that film, you’ll feel the emotions Bridges and Goldstein want you to experience tenfold, and your conception of cinema as an art form may open up even further…

SCORE: ★★