Luca Guadagnino’s We Are Who We Are is contemporary, lively, and breathtakingly human, dwelling in the awkwardness of teenage exploration and sensation with an honesty that is at times painful
doesn’t quite prepare the viewer for what’s to come. But that’s fitting, in a way, because in it, 14-year-old Fraser is dropped into an entirely unfamiliar world himself. His mother, Sarah —a military commander—has just been put in charge of a military garrison in Chioggia, Italy, a seaside town south of Venice.
The premiere finds Fraser, Sarah, and her wife, Annie emerging from their flight—baggage lost, blinking in the bright Italian sunlight—to step into a new world. In all the casting decisions in all the world, none may seem quite so incongruous as casting it-girl Chloé Sevigny as an American army general. But Sevigny blends seamlessly into the role, projecting impassive potential energy through her model body, suggesting a violence that is lying in wait. Her marriage trips up the conventional military wife that greets them at the airport, but everything else about Sarah and Annie—who also works for the military—reads unobtrusive, disciplined, and average. That’s not the case with Fraser, who was a teenager in New York City until his mom’s job interfered. With the intense focus on teenage behavior that characterizedintroduces us to a squirming bleach-blond adolescent in leopard-print skater shorts—someone in the process of trying to be himself, and willing to show his work in the meantime. He introduces himself as a “detached” Libra, tunes out his parents to stare out the window, and plugs his headphones into his ears when he doesn’t want to hear them anymore. Sarah and Annie rapidly fade into the background of the episode as he pokes his nose into every corner of the base, slipping into classrooms and gym locker rooms and eventually following a group of kids his age on their way to the beach. One of them, Brit offers to help him buy alcohol, which he drinks a lot of, with Sarah’s occasional permission. He doesn’t quite get along with them kids, but he isn’t afraid to hang onto them either; he’s especially interested in his next-door neighbor, the lovely and enigmatic Caitlin . The day ends badly, exposing to the viewer not only to his frailties, but to the fissures in his parental relationships. The second episode begins the same day again. But this time, it tells it from the perspective of neighbor Caitlin, daughter of the conservative military wife that greeted them at the airport and Richard , a high-ranking officer at the base who has some unspecified antagonism toward General Wilson, a.k.a., Fraser’s mom. It begins with her sitting in the prow of a speedboat, gliding through a lagoon in bluish predawn light. The camera is behind her, so we can’t see her face: She’s moving forward, but we don’t know how she feels about it. The following hour layers her story on top of Fraser’s, deepening the complexity of this army base while heightening the moments when they interact. We meet the group of teens going to the beach again, but this time from the inside, where their joshing solidarity is fractured by romance, squabbles, and occasional outbursts of temper. Caitlin’s boyfriend Sam seems to bore her, while her brother Danny appears prone to intense, uncontrollable anger. Caitlin is fascinatingly unmoved by the tempests around her, calmly preoccupied with her own becoming. Like Fraser—maybe like all teenagers—she tunes out the drama her parents are mired in, the power politics of the military base, and even the 2016 presidential election, which is happening on TVs in the background. In one scene, Richard comes in with a “Make America Great Again” hat for her, then jokes that he didn’t anticipate how it wouldn’t fit over her hair. That’s the end of their discussion about the hat and the election.By the end of the episode, Fraser and Caitlin spot something in each other that they recognize, and become fast friends, as the volatile situation around them begins to morph uncontrollably. What begins as a story about two teenagers, each a misfit in their own way, becomes a story about how their community holds them in place—sometimes to their benefit, sometimes against their will. Fraser’s contentious relationship with his mother is only exacerbated by her behavior as the base’s commanding officer. Caitlin finds the roots of her brother’s anger in her intensely disciplined father. By the fourth episode, when one of their group is called up to active duty,openly struggles with the military calling these families have bound themselves to, showing us all of their tenderness and vulnerability even as they are called to commit state-sanctioned violence. With only half of the episodes sent to critics, there’s much remaining I don’t know. But the first four episodes of—offer a rich exploration of the teenage experience in an especially heightened location. Guadagnino’s films tend to portray characters in a world that feels removed from our own—but that distance is missing from, even as the teenagers’ precious insularity is preserved through his careful, affectionate lens. This story is contemporary, lively, and breathtakingly human, dwelling in the awkwardness of teenage exploration and sensation with an honesty that is at times painful. It is Guadagnino’s talent to make this sprawling, uncomfortable period of life into something that reads, onscreen, as poignant and beautiful.transforms these gawky, terrible creatures who talk back to their parents into growing life forms filled with an unquenchable human thirst—hands raised, seeking the sky.
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