SXSW Review: ‘We Strangers’

 By Abe Friedtanzer

It’s rarely comfortable to hear the kinds of things that people say to those they hire to work in their homes. Most grin and bear it, letting a reductive comment or offensive statement go for the sake of keeping a paycheck and not starting something. The protagonist of We Strangers does something different, utilizing the gullibility of one woman whose house she cleans to make some extra money and realizing that it will only make her more valuable. It’s only a half-calculated gamble, which defines most of what this vexing main character does…

Rayelle (Kirby) is cleaning the office of Dr. Neeraj Patel (Hari Dhillon) when she’s approached by Jean Laich (Maria Dizzia), who’s not sure who she is but seems intrigued by her. When Dr. Patel hires Rayelle to clean his house, he suggests that she also clean Jean’s since she is his neighbor. When Jean shares a bit too much about herself, Rayelle takes a leap and claims to be a medium. She soon begins charging both Rayelle and Dr. Patel’s wife Tracy (Sarah Goldberg) for readings, grasping at clues she sees around their homes to keep up this illusion.

It’s very hard to get a reading on Rayelle. She doesn’t have a handle on her home life, and she seems to say yes to everything out of a desire to be seen as vital by her new employers. Why she jumps to invent this ability is a mystery, especially since she’s not all that creative and offers basic sentiments that easily fool Jean but shouldn’t hit the much more discerning Tracy the same way. It’s most interesting to see her prickly relationship with the Patels’ daughter Sunny (Mischa Reddy), who she seems to perceive as an equal who she can talk to in a radically different way. Those scenes are tense and full of intrigue, considerably more heightened than most of the rest of the film.

Kirby will be recognizable to audiences mostly from her role as Simone on The Good Place, and she’s had a number of other great TV roles, including Barry with costar Goldberg. This part doesn’t take advantage of her comedic abilities and instead casts her in a different light, moderately resourceful and unpredictable as she does one job very well - cleaning - and another she makes up as she goes along with no real plan for what’s coming next. We Strangers runs just eighty minutes but doesn’t feel like a closed loop, starting a worthwhile journey to somewhere but getting lost along the way. B-

We Strangers is screening in the Narrative Feature Competition at the 2024 SXSW Film and TV Festival.

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