All Between Us is a 2018 comedy about newly-engaged couple gather family and friends together for a dinner party to make an announcement.
If you’re the betting type, you can be pretty confident in laying money down that if the movie you’re watching is all about a dinner party, something bad is gonna happen. That’s a sure thing. From squabbles and shenanigans to fights and flirtations, the dinner party has long been setting for all kinds of chaos, a few recent entries keeping the proud tradition alive and kicking. With Jamie Jones‘ debut All Between Us, it’s back to the table we go, with another bit of relationship mayhem that does a little trickery in the end, making this well worth a look.
Clara (Denyce Lawton) and Ray (Brian Hooks) meet in a club and make an instant connection, the two throwing sparks right from the start. Three years later, they are living together in a big apartment and ready to tie the knot. To celebrate, they decide to host a dinner party for friends and family, bringing together a wild collection of eccentric personalities that don’t exactly mix. It’s also the first time Ray is meeting Clara’s wealthy parents in person, so the pressure is on, but that’s only the tip of the Titanic as the night unspools a mess of secrets and old haunts that careen this party into all kinds of troubled waters.
The main course seems to be cruelty, with Ray served up on a platter, where Clara’s brother Freddy (Esau McGraw), a Christian fanatic who spent four days in prison – which he sees as a kind of badge of honor with all the cred – absolutely ripping him up while Clara’s father (Carl Gilliard) straight up hates on the man. Meanwhile, Clara’s best friend Mishawn (Tiffany Haddish) shows up with her white boyfriend Ty (Christian Levatino), who turns out to be the most stable of the lot as a couple of oblivious potheads arrive, a wannabe hip hop DJ, and the best man, drunk and depressed.
Written by Ev Durán, All Between Us is a brief affair, running just about 80 minutes and set almost entirely in Clara and Ray’s wide open apartment. Filmed like a stage play, the dialogue-driven film is ostensibly a comedy but by its end is anything but, a complex disaster that shutters more than just the party. It’s bookended by Clara and Ray’s meeting and is a clever little way to begin and end the story, the time between shifting perspectives on how we see them at the start versus how we do in the end.
I’m being careful to avoid what exactly does happen at the party, as a lot does, including many uncomfortable exchanges between these often very purposefully unlikeable people who orbit around the soon to be newlyweds, some exaggerated to a point. What’s interesting is how there are no real heroes here, every character flawed, including Clara and Ray. While the film is limited by its budget, and not everyone quite so convincing, both Lawton and Hooks are terrific to watch, their early scenes together very natural and surprisingly authentic, helping a lot in making the end all the more impactful.
All Between Us is a film about honest relationships, its greatest strength its commitment to the characters. While it lacks some polish and has a few too many people wandering in out that tend to distract (or in one case at the end, outright upset a great moment of tension), it is an earnest little gem that doesn’t play by the rules when the credits roll, leaving this something to talk about, a rarity when it comes to movies like this.
All Between Us will be available on DVD and Digital on June 5, 2018.