All of You Review: LFF 2024

Can a scientific test determine your soulmate? Brett Goldstein and Imogen Poots find out in All of You

Imogen Poots and Ted Lasso’s Brett Goldstein star in this romantic drama that Goldstein penned alongside All of You’s director William Bridges. It premiered last month at Toronto International Film Festival and will now be seen by a handful more audiences at the BFI London Film Festival.

In a near future London Simon (Goldstein) reluctantly drops off his best friend Laura (Poots) at a swanky doctor’s office to undergo ‘the test,’ a scientific process that claims to be able to match its users with their soulmate with a 100% success rate. Simon laments that all of their friends who have taken the test suddenly disappear socially once they meet their soulmate as they’re no longer interested in hanging out – and he can’t understand why anyone would want to take the mystery and personal choice out of dating. Simon has no interest in taking the test. It’s clear to anyone with eyes that he’s in love with Laura.

Laura is matched up with ‘square but sweet’ Lukas and the two go on to have a happy marriage and a perfect child together while Simon watches on with a forced smile from the sidelines. When a few years into her marriage Laura decides that she is interested in Simon after all, the two begin a torrid but deeply emotional affair. Yet despite her obvious love for Simon, Laura is unwilling to break up her family or let go of the ‘perfect soulmate’ the test set her up with.

All of You is just the latest in a number of films and television shows that have featured plots regarding a scientific test for love in the last few years. Indeed, I watched the Jessie Buckley/Riz Ahmed drama ‘Fingernails’ in the exact same screen nearly a year ago to the very day. Unlike its predecessors All of You barely focuses on the slightly sci fi element of ‘the test,’ pretty much forgetting the plot point all together after the first 20 minutes. It only pops up in a few throwaway lines and feels a little pointless as a device.

Though the test itself has little relevance to the story in the end, the two protagonists reactions to it pretty much sum up why their relationship is an affair in the first place. Laura wants all the answers given to her, she wants certainty and to be told ‘’this is what’s best for you’’ without having to take any risks. Having been told by a piece of paper that Lukas is her soulmate is one reason not to leave him yes, but ultimately you come to question if that’s influencing her decision making at all in the end.

As the affair rolls on for what must be a decade our two characters find themselves moving in circles and repeating old patterns with little sign of development, and I couldn’t help feel the supposed tragedy of it all was wearing a bit then. This is no epic doomed romance; no one is shipping off to war, or dying of terminal cancer or being kept apart by warring families – literally the only reason these two characters aren’t already together is that one of them selfishly doesn’t want to get a divorce. As swoon worthy as Poots and Goldstein are, and as believable as their chemistry is, it’s not necessarily guaranteed to have the audience rooting for them.

These negative words that don’t quite sum up the fact that this is a decent enough little movie that will entertain most audiences for its 90-minute running time. The two stars give terrific performances and bounce well off each other with a lovely, comical back and forth even if their hopeless pining for each other isn’t anywhere near moving enough to bring you to tears. If you’re looking for a ‘scientific formula to love’ movie I vastly preferred Fingernails, but if infidelity drama is enough this might be up your street.

All of You is playing at the BFI London Film Festival 2024. Wider UK release details have yet to be confirmed