All of Us Strangers tells a story through all of its crafts from cinematography to its film editing to its brilliant score. Our Awards Editor, Jillian Chilingerian, was lucky enough to speak to the composer, Emilie Levienaise-Farrouch, about her work on the film. Levienaise-Farrouch spoke about how the score was used to truly complement the story Andrew Haigh was unfolding on screen.

Jillian Chilingerian: I’m so excited to chat with you. I just really love and admire composers so much. I can’t wait to dive in because this film is so beautiful, emotional and haunting. So I can’t wait to figure out more about how that came to be with the score because I feel like sound is so instrumental to how we feel as we are watching something. I’m always curious with composers is when you get that script and you’re reading it, what is processing through your mind and what you’re thinking of what sounds and instruments you want to work with? Especially for this one, All of Us Strangers, communicating these emotions through sound.
Emilie Levienaise-Farrouch: Generally, when I get a script, I try to not have initial ideas, but you know, I think it’s so important to keep in mind that the film starts in the edit, really, because that’s when you can see what the performance are like, what the color palette is like. And it’s just that’s when you really start understanding what the film will need in terms of music. And with All of Us Strangers, I came on board during edit, which meant I was able to watch the film. And yeah, it was pretty obvious that it was something I really, really wanted to do, because it really touched me, I really responded strongly to it. And I felt like, from that reaction, I would be able to make good music for it. But in terms of communicating, I think it’s just discussing it, not necessarily in a musically technical way. It’s talking about what are we trying to communicate with the film. And what is the backstory of the characters? What was going on in their minds? And then, that’s quite intuitive, which is, how would I express those emotions if I was in their shoes, and then there’s a second layer that’s a little bit more technical, where you start thinking about what makes sense intellectually. But yeah, we tried to avoid going into musical terms when discussing with the director because I also want to have quite a spontaneous response from them, you know, I send the music and I kind of want to know, what it creates in them. And then I can use the music rather than words to develop the score.

Jillian Chilingerian: I love hearing that. And going into what you’re talking about with this emotion, I feel like for Andrew Scott’s character of Adam, the score perfectly complements us guiding along with his journey and a lot of the emotion and nuance we see in his eyes. So I was wondering if you could talk about kind of using that to as an emotional chord.
Emilie Levienaise-Farrouch: Now, I think you’re right there is I do believe it’s important to well, not always, but especially on a film like this one to take your cue from the intensity of the performances, if the performances is quite subtle, and if we’re talking about a character that’s more on the repressed side of expressing his emotion, I think it’s quite important that the music doesn’t feel out of touch with that character’s truth. So on this one, it is about smaller gestures. It is about something more delicate and more subtle. But yeah, it’s performance. Of course I watch those scenes so many times. So I ended up being very in tune with the rhythm of of the beginning of an eye that starting to cry or just a little downturn of the mouth and tried to use to use those as a indication of the pacing of the music.

Jillian Chilingerian: Yeah, everyone in this movie gives such good performances. And I love that kind of matching how that that emotion is evoking through that. Also with this one, we kind of go through two of his worlds with him and his apartment going through his routine. And then as well as his inner child, when he returned home. And so, going back to the score of using that to almost distinguish these two journeys of his personalities that he’s going on.
Emilie Levienaise-Farrouch: I think why we’re trying to always stay with him, in a sense. So I think there’s quite a lot of recurring instruments throughout the score. Because it was quite important in a sense, the timeline is so complex, you kind of jump, the more the story progress, the more you kind of jump between those two universes between, family and Harry. And, and I think we decided quite early on that the music could really give us a thread that links everything rather than augmenting that sense of jumping or separating between timelines. So yeah, I was always because at the end of the day, Adam is still the same. Throughout, sometimes he’s healing his inner child and sometimes is just pushing it in the background, but it’s always there, you know?

Jillian Chilingerian: Yeah. I love how the emotion is very much a constant. And you can feel that, I think perfectly through the music and the sound that you’re hearing. And then as you mentioned, you got to watch everything before you started your work. So I’m wondering about those last final moments in the film and then approaching that scene, because it’s just so otherworldly, but haunting? So, what was your approach to piecing that final moment?
Emilie Levienaise-Farrouch: I mean, for me, on that final scene, it was probably a moment where I kind of shifted my focus so slightly on Harry, more than at any other point in the film, because you know, it’s just a moment that’s so heartbreaking for him and his fragility really, really comes through and you start to understand that behind the kind of swagger or the charm there is there is also someone who is deeply hurt. And yeah, at that specific moment of realization for him, I did want to make something that felt sadder in a sense and, and brought us out of the other worldliness and really into his own heartbreak about what happened to his life. So yeah, for me, it was just yeah, just feeling really empathetic towards Harry others at this time and and I guess again, accompanying what Adam is doing, which is giving him comfort. And I remember with Andrew we just really wanted those moments leading to the final seem to feel incredibly warm, like really warm and, and a big cloud of warmth that just lifts you up towards the final images.

Jillian Chilingerian: I love hearing about that warmth because I feel like it perfectly matches how you kind of see it and definitely in those moments of how the color palettes are. I think that’s really fascinating that you brought that up because I feel like sometimes like we don’t really put two and two together on how the color and the sound kind of inform each other.
Emilie Levienaise-Farrouch: I’ve worked with Jamie’s images before so I’m a big fan and yeah, I think you know, this is kind of a testament to Andrew Haigh’s vision. I think he always wanted this film to have a richness, which is why we decided in the end to use some acoustic instrument even though we manipulate them because you’ll notice in the film, there’s a lot of emphasis on human touch. And I think it was really important for him that even though it is a ghost story that it has that human warmth to it, that physicality to it and it felt rather than music wouldn’t feel cold. Yeah, wouldn’t feel too abstract that you would still have a sense that someone is playing it. And I think that’s just the way it’s shot on film and a wider use of color is so important and so vibrant, in a sense, because it has to feel alive. It has to feel very connected to life, even though some characters are not alive.

Jillian Chilingerian: Yeah, I love that juxtaposition. Because I feel like often when we have these ghost stories, it feels very distant. But this one, you know, when you’re watching us, the audience, you’re very brought in, and that emphasis on touch is just evident throughout the entire thing. I love the scenes with Jamie and Claire, and Andrew, because you really feel like you’re there with them. And it’s just kind of that glow of childhood mixed with the nostalgia, almost of how the the score is accompanying that. I feel like it’s very different from how we would imagine a ghost story in film.
Emilie Levienaise-Farrouch: I think that’s also what’s so interesting with this film, it is such a specific story I could so specific, and yet, all the things it touches are something every single person on this planet will experience. They are the core of our human relationship. I think that’s what really drew me to this film. Yeah. And that was what was also great with the score, because it couldn’t be a stereotypical score. And it couldn’t be a technical score that I had to find it so on. So I was really lucky to be part of it. That’s for sure.

Jillian Chilingerian: I feel like this film is definitely going to become like a phenomenon and something that people are going to hold very deep and relate to for years to come. I think your work just really speaks to being able to have that connection. So I’d like to thank you so much. And congratulations.
Emilie Levienaise-Farrouch: I do hope people really connect with the film and and I do hope that a lot of people are going to feel seen watching it. And I feel like this film is also telling them about love and that you know loneliness is not inevitable.

All of Us Strangers will be in select theaters December 22, 2023.