Goldstein and Poots shine in All of You, a romantic drama with a very compelling premise that is only used as a starting point for a much more conventional story.
Director: William Bridges
Genre: Drama
Run Time: 98
BFI London Film Festival Screening: October 10-11, 2024
U.S. Release Date: TBA
U.K. Release Date: TBA
Remember that Big Bang Theory episode where one of the protagonists points out that the character of Indiana Jones is completely irrelevant to the plot of Raiders of the Lost Ark? I found myself thinking the same thing about the premise of All of You, which is also what drew me to the film in the first place. William Bridges’s (Black Mirror) movie, which he co-wrote with Brett Goldsten (Ted Lasso), takes place in a near-future where a test can determine who your soulmate is.
If it’s sounds familiar, it’s probably because last year’s Fingernails, which was also screned at the BFI London Film Festival, had a similar set up: one of the protagonists takes the test and is connected with their “true love,” but their life is turned inside out when a third romantic interest comes into the picture. But while Fingernails had plenty of disquieting dystopian elements and something insightful to say about the nature of relationships, the existence of love, and how society shapes our need for validation, All of You only uses its premise as the starting point for a much more conventional, dystopia-free kind of drama.
Our two protagonists are Laura (Imogen Poots, of French Exit) and Simon (Goldstein), the latter of whom is clearly in love with the former in a way that’s obvious to everyone but Laura herself. When we first meet them, Laura is about to take the “Soul Connex” test, which the latter pays for in a somewhat masochistic move. Not long later, she’s happily married to Lukas (Steven Cree, of A Discovery of Witches), a nice man who would appear to be living proof that the test has worked. As the film skips forward in time more than once throughout its first half, we witness Laura’s interactions with Simon, as the former achieves various milestones in her relationship and the latter remains not-so-secretly smitten by her. Except that Laura, who soon finds herself a mother to a little girl, isn’t so happy after all. “Did you give me the money [to find my soulmate] because you thought it might be you?,” she one day asks him, out of the blue, and everything changes.
What happens next is what you probably imagined would happen all along, which isn’t a bad thing per se. Even if the sci-fi elements of the film’s premise are completely left aside to make room for a pretty conventional romance between a married woman and another man, All of You still had potential as a romantic drama, particularly as Goldstein and Poots have great chemistry together. The issue, here, is that it’s hard to tell what exactly the movie is trying to say, besides from the very obvious message that lies in its premise itself: a dating service might not be the best way to find one’s soulmate.
On top of this, All Of You also has some tonal issues. Most of the film’s humor comes from Goldstein’s Simon, and while several people were laughing at his lines in my screening, I struggled not to see him as a less angry and less funny version of Roy Kent, the character he plays in Ted Lasso, and found the jokes a little forced. When the two protagonists start approaching one another in a romantic way, some puzzling character choices made me like them both a lot less; their behaviour soon becomes even more contradictory and that’s when the romance turns into melodrama. Add a seriously unappealing sex scene to the mix, and not even its talented cast – including a fantastic Zawe Ashton as one of the most believable and well-rounded characters in the movie – can save the film from its storytelling flaws.
It really is a shame to see a movie with such potential not live up its premise, especially when such talented creatives are involved. Leaving its dystopian elements aside, All of You could have still worked as an analysis of modern relationships if only it had made its characters more believable and made up its mind on what exactly it wanted to say. Here, there are some moments that stand out both filmmaking and storytelling-wise, but it’s sadly not enough to make for a truly memorable watch.
All of You will be screened at the BFI London Film Festival on October 10-11, 2024. Read our list of 30 movies to watch at the 2024 BFI London Film Festival!
