WE STRANGERS (SXSW2024) – Review by Valerie Kalfrin
A White woman peers through the windows of an elegant modern home. A Black woman opens the door.
“Um, hi. I haven’t seen you here before,” the White woman says.
The audacity of the implied question is one microaggression that Ray, the Black woman in this interaction, faces in We Strangers. Debuting at the 2024 SXSW Film Festival, this empathetic drama full of wry humor puts viewers in Ray’s shoes as she navigates racism and classism while trying to use things she learns to her advantage.
Played by Kirby (Barry) in an engaging performance, Ray balances cleaning jobs with driving her mother (Tina Lifford, Queen Sugar) to and from work and sharing childcare with her friend Mari (Kara Young, I’m a Virgo). Ray’s own bathroom is hardly spotless, but she’s tidy enough for clients like Neeraj Patel (Hari Dhillon, The Serial Killer’s Wife), a podiatrist who hires her to clean his house.
The woman who accosts her in the opening moments is Jean (Maria Dizzia, Life & Beth), a neighbor who relaxes upon learning that Ray is a maid. Ray soon surmises an affair or at least flirtation between Jean and Patel, who pays for Ray to clean Jean’s home too.
When Ray notices Jean enthralled with a TV show about a medium, she says she also can speak to spirits, partly to toy with Jean. Naturally, Jean buys this, especially when Ray performs a “reading,” patching together vague proclamations based on what she’s observed around Jean’s house.
Soon, Jean is gushing to Patel’s wife, Tracy (Sarah Goldberg, Barry) and her other friends about Ray’s gift, netting Ray extra money. (The sound design amusingly adds a cash register’s “ka-ching” when someone pays her for a reading.) But claiming to speak to spirits also boxes Ray into living a lie.
Writer-director Anu Valia (The Afterparty) loads We Strangers with discomfort that viewers can sense even without Kirby’s subtle reactions. Jean’s house is a middle-class bubble of cluelessness, for instance, with a doorbell that rings the opening bars of “Dixie” and a husband (Paul Adelstein, The Menu) who brags about his collection of American flag photos taken in different states.
The Patels’ home hits other awkward notes, with their teen daughter (Mischa Reddy), all entitled ennui, sparring with her mother, then stealing and pawning whatever she can get her hands on. Meanwhile, Ray entertains Mari’s kids with a cheap plastic lens, viewing their neighbors through multicolored beams like magic.
As Ray devotes more time with the Patels and Jean, she strains her relationships with her mom and Mari. Her readings are open enough that people interpret whatever they want to hear—Ray coyly describes herself as a “therapist” at one point—but the game cast also shows how they’re never satisfied.
Will they truly accept Ray? And is that what she really wants? Throughout the film, Valia weaves references to Mount Pelée, a Martinique volcano that erupted in 1902. An inmate in solitary confinement survived the eruption, only to emerge into a charred world. The cinematography overlays a sleeping Ray with images of the volcano, but is she the mountain, primed to burst, or the prisoner, trading one circumstance for another?
Navigating thorny moments with irony, We Strangers shows how some people see only what they want, no matter the signs before them.
