All of Us Strangers review: Andrew Haigh\u2019s film is a beautiful haunting<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\nIt\u2019s not the first time this has been exposed on film, notably in Peter Mullan\u2019s 2002 Golden Lion-winning film The Magdalene Sisters. But while that was a full and frank look at this horrifying practice, Mielants\u2019s movie is deliberately more subtle.<\/p>\n
Gradually, we learn that Bill was the son of an unwed teenage mother who escaped the laundries, making his sympathy towards Sarah understandable. Rarely, though, does the film slip into melodrama; expect no grandstanding from Murphy or his co-stars here.<\/p>\n
Scripted by playwright Enda Walsh (whose play Disco Pigs was previously adapted on screen, and gave Murphy an early, show-stopping role), Small Things Like These really scores highly in the way it\u2019s been shot.<\/p>\n
Mielants and his cinematographer Frank van den Eeden beautifully capture rural Ireland in the mid-\u201980s, in a way that suggests how little has changed since Bill was a boy in the 1950s.<\/p>\n
With much of the film shot around dusk or nighttime, even the sight of carol singers in the street comes with an eerie tint.<\/p>\n
At the heart, of course, is Murphy, who gives a performance of great stillness and control. It\u2019s unlikely to catch Hollywood\u2019s eye in the way Oppenheimer has, but it\u2019s another reminder of what a fine and nuanced actor he is.<\/p>\n