
While Emma (Margaret Cho) is recovering from the loss of her dog, her former colleague, Kayla (Miss Pyle) tries to offer her some peace. In her words, “My grandmother would tell me that once they are yours, they belong to you forever. Even in absence, they would seek ways of reassuring you that they are around.”
It is the kind of cliche slogan, often worn out, which should be familiar to most people who endured the negative effects of parting with someone and, given the circumstances, can be interpreted as banal or even deeply insightful. All That We Love takes it as its northern star and inverts it to the latter. What at first glance appears like a sappy crying on paper, turns out to be a tender tribute that delves into various forms of love and the impressions left resonating in space even after the beloved has departed.
Emma sings to her dog Tanner in the first scene, but her voice becomes increasingly strained as she cradles him in the last moments of his life. However, even though Tanner is the most acute loss during her lifetime, she has suffered more losses. Her daughter Maggie who is portrayed by Alice Lee plans to go to Australia for 5 weeks, girlfriend of Tanner Devon Bostick, but in reality, it is for five months making her feel that the nest has suddenly become empty. At the same time, her ex-husband Andy who is Kenneth Choi unexpectedly appears in her life, after many years of absence and now she has to deal with again all the mess of emotions he created when he was the first time around.
This last appearance of Tanner proves to be his last in life. Not the camera though; Yen Tan’s heroine is able to make such an absence convey quite a bit. Some scenes never fail to highlight a character’s out-of-frame person: an empty pet’s pillow or a dog’s bowl emphasized with food suggests the animal, is not there, who would rather take a nap or load a bowl with dinner. There is, however, a reverse when he tries to invest the frame with Tanner’s warmth. This movie All That We Love is too realistic for voicing Tanner as well and showing him longing on some rainbow bridge. Still, when magic hour embraces Emma’s silhouette, Tanner’s sight of the world, Tanner’s love surrounds her in this instance and we don’t doubt it.
Tan’s storytelling view is partnered with a narrative that has some oddities that are so simple that they seem to be real life. (For instance, Tan, who wrote the screenplay with Clay Liford, has claimed that the loss of his dog also called Tanner affected him.) Others are downright depressing: Emma explains how, after Andy’s departure, a very young Maggie grew so obsessed with a shampoo commercial that she actually believed he was in it. “So she became extremely paranoid afterward. Things like that made it virtually impossible not to hate you,” she says to him now.
But Tan’s note has a few tragicomic quirks as well: hope amidst despair. When Emma’s dog that she adopts spontaneously creates chaos, Kayla is reprimanded for suggesting there is a problem with the voice she’s using: “Do you think that people are and I quote shitting my voice?!” she screams.
All that positivity aside, it is worth noting that this film has its character development issues when it comes to people around Emma. We are introduced to Emma’s ex-sister-in-law Raven a folk mukbang YouTuber played by the ugly funny actress Atsuko Okatsuka, whom Emma is shown a video of topper snorting a noodle up her nose but as early as her introduction, she drownss deeper into the background, and by her next appearance, half of us are already wondering who she was. And while it’s understandable that the movie skips explaining every tiny particular of Maggie’s career as a fledgling illustrator, or Stan’s romance and subsequent marriage with his late spouse, the barest of such explanations are so few that Emma’s universe appears to be very exclusive.
What All That We Love does have a grasp on, though, is the familiarity these people have with each other. Their intimacy is reflected in how quickly Emma and Andy slip back into their old chemistry before the friction of their arguments set in. Or, in the way that Maggie doesn’t think twice about Emma and Stan’s scuffle, having watched her mother and godfather fight a million times. What’s different this time is the fact that Maggie hears what is causing the argument in the first place. The issue is Emma talking to Andy. “He left us behind, we moved ahead. If I had to choose, I would have moved ahead,” she shouts to her mother. But the volume at which Maggie shouts tells the other story. Those feelings of betrayal or anger are still with her, and will be with her for a long time if not for good. For better or for worse, they are just components she has.
Tanner passed away almost four years ago, which means it has also been four years since I lost my beloved tuxedo cat, Roger. Gradually, I have been able to recover: I no longer weep whenever I see one of his toys, nor do I lose sleep over how our last moments were spent together. And luckily, I am in a situation where I do not have as much desire to check his pictures. Once in a while, though, something happens the perfect set of circumstances comes together that will bring the pain right back to the fore. It was the beautiful and touching show titled All We Love that helped see this through.
For more movies like All That We Love visit 123 movies