CallMeByYourName director Luca Guadagnino makes his TV debut with 'We Are Who We Are' on HBO. Read the review of the immersive teen drama set in Italy here
There are no high speed car chases or swelling orchestras in the new/Sky drama. From co-creator and director Luca Guadagnino, the series centers a wandering pack of teenagers living on an American military base in an otherwise sleepy little Italian town circa 2016. And yet, the intimate filming and layered sound design makes “We Are Who We Are” feel more like an immersive experience than most action movies could dream of.
The first two episodes act in parallel to each other, unfolding over the same period of time but from the perspective of two different kids. In the premiere, 14 year-old Fraser arrives in Italy from his “perfect” life in New York City to live on the base with his mothers , one of whom, Sarah , is taking over as colonel.
ón’s Harper is the steady hand to Fraser’s fidgety one; their friendship grounds the sometimes hazy “We Are Who We Are” in something palpably real. The series is at its most emotionally resonant while tracking that oxymoronic intersection of lazy spontaneity in which teenagers live. So it’s both interesting and disappointing that “We Are Who We Are” doesn’t seem to quite know who its adults are. This doesn’t seem the fault of the actors, who are all excellent. Sevigny’s Sarah is restless and mean; her relationship to her son is more than a little embryonic, a dynamic Sevigny plays well even as it never truly comes into focus.
The show losing the thread of those adult characters is a particular shame because everything else in “We Are Who We Are” is so impressively, specifically meticulous. Frederik Wenzel’s cinematography, Marco Costa’s editing, Robin Urdang’s music supervision and Devonté Hynes’ original music crash together with Guadagnino’s directing to create dreamy slices of life that linger in the air like smoke.
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