Technophobe romance, kind of, All of You is a little bit Eternal Sunshine, a little bit One Day. Set in an adjacent future (the present day with a tech curlicue), it imagines a world where romance is curated by tech companies promising there is someone out there for everyone and that they are just the company to do the hooking up with Miss or Mr Right.
What could possibly go wrong? Quite a lot, it turns out. Because human emotions are not lines of code. They not only don’t play to a script, they’ll go out of their way to actively undermine it.
Laura and Simon are old university buddies. He’s in love with her but only realises it on the day he’s going with her to have her “test” – the advanced computer matchmaking service designed to pinpoint the man of her dreams. Instead of speaking up, perhaps because he’s overwhelmed by his emotions, Simon keeps shtumm, Laura goes in and has the test, and hey presto, is soon married to Lukas, a decent sort and clearly the man for Laura because the algorithm says so.
That bit of techy interference is the Eternal Sunshine bit. The One Day bit is the structure of All of You, which returns to Laura and Simon – and occasionally Lukas – periodically down the years to see how everyone is getting on. Laura having a baby, Simon having a relationship with a nice young woman called Andrea, until that founders on the rocks of his feelings for AN Other, Laura oblivious, then less oblivious and then…
Doom hovers in the background. A ruined relationship with Lukas if Laura ventures beyond the friend zone with Simon. A life entirely on hold for Simon, who cannot form a meaningful relationship with anyone because he can’t get beyond Laura.
Why doesn’t Simon bite the bullet and go and have the test himself, and find someone perfect for him? Because he’s a cynic and an old-fashioned romantic holding out for the real thing in a world of manufactured prompts. As far as Simon is concerned, a computer matchmaker is just not a romantic way of going about things.
The same could be said of the film, which isn’t that romantic either. For all its emotive wrapping All of You is more of a thriller, almost noirish in its sense of fate toying with individuals and with a cold eye on the ramifications of the jettisoning of individual choice.
Director William Bridges and writer Brett Goldstein have spent ten years working what was originally a short, For Life, up to feature length. As is sometimes the way with shorts that get a second life, there is a sense of the wheels spinning now and again, though Bridges works at keeping the visuals handsome. It’s a good-looking film, especially in the montage sections featuring good-looking people in dappled, sun-kissed beauty spots.
Imogen Poots works like a Trojan to generate something approaching chemistry between her and Goldstein, who plays Simon, but there is none there. And the more Laura laughs raucously at Simon’s non-jokes, the clearer it becomes that what the film really needs is a lighter touch. Simon’s deadbeat cynicism wears out its welcome pretty quickly and the devoutly-to-be-wished-for union of Simon and Laura eventually starts to look like it might not be such a bright idea after all, which is not what the film would have us believe.
Around the edges Zawe Ashton as Andrea and Steven Cree as Lukas do what they can with thin characters, though there’s more for them than there is for Jenna Coleman – fans watching the film because she’s in it get maybe half a minute.
It all feels forced, and partly that’s the idea – Laura is kidding herself, isn’t she, that the computer has found her the perfect man in Lukas. Simon is cracking under the strain of maintaining the fiction that he and Laura are just best buddies. But there’s another layer of awkwardness here, a sense of something being not quite right. Maybe a run over with an algorithm would have fixed it.
All of You – Watch it/buy it at Amazon
I am an Amazon affiliate
© Steve Morrissey 2025
