TIFF 2024: ‘All Of You’ Reaps Few Romance Rewards

All of You is the latest romantic drama to address whether technology can determine one’s soulmate. Starring Imogen Poots and Brett Goldstein, who also co-wrote the screenplay with director Will Bridges, the film attempts to expand upon the roots Goldstein and Bridges built in their AMC series, Soulmates. It’s questionable whether or not the exploration of the technology in the film is as successful as the series. However, it finds a stronger foundation when dissecting the tragedy of its romance, even if the stasis of the relationship proves more frustrating than not.  

Set in the not-too-distant future, Simon (Brett Goldstein) accompanies his best friend, Laura (Imogen Poots), to Soul Connex to be matched with her soulmate. Simon’s crush on Laura is undeniable from the start, and he even finances the test for Laura, a precedent that remains between them throughout the film. Despite his cynical, self-effacing humor, there’s a small glimmer of hope that perhaps the test will declare him her soulmate. Unfortunately, that’s now how the wheels of story tension roll in All of You.

Laura gets paired up with Lukas (Steven Cree), and despite it being clear that she’s having to force herself to make the connection happen, the two inevitably marry and have a child. Simon masochistically watches from afar, even as Laura’s embrace of Lukas prompts them to distance themselves. His feelings for her become undeniable after the collapse of his relationship, but he seems to go nowhere until a major devastating life event rocks Laura’s world and pushes her to make a relationship-altering decision. Torn between Soul Connex’s influential choice for her and her feelings for her friend, All of You transforms into a frustrating watch as the two fall into a pattern of guilt and selfishness.

All of You works better if viewed as a continuation or addition to the expanded universe of Soulmates. Throughout Soulmates, Bridges and Goldstein crafted wholly complicated and mostly unlikable characters to explore the concept of Soul Connex and how people would cope upon learning of their soulmate. Much like Soulmates, the idea that there might be something sound  behind Soul Connex and its algorithm is present by the end of All of You. However, the journey to this discovery is frustrating, and I mean this in both a good and a bad way, due to the general stasis the characters fall themselves in.

Poots’s Laura is immature and selfish. That much is clear by the time she makes her cataclysmic decision. Simon himself almost mirrors Laura but is also an object of pity for all of his hope in the idea that Soul Connex is wrong. There’s a fun gender reversal in how Bridges and Goldstein construct the power dynamics between these two characters, with Laura taking on the more traditional male archetypal role. While both are complicit in their decisions, she is the easier to villainize.

Spanning the course of a decade, the passing of time is illustrated through a series of quick-cut vignettes and expositional dialogue that push things forward. The vignettes work well to highlight this but also reveal a surface-level escalation of Laura’s and Simon’s relationship, which almost shows the audience how little the relationship may actually mean in the end. It’s cyclic, with the two going through a series of repetitious emotional arcs with each outing. By the time the next bout of guilt hits, it more than turns into a self-flagellating lesson in patience and wondering when they’ll have their come-to-Jesus moment.

The film’s strength lies in its performances rather than a broader exploration of Soul Connex. The lack of exploration proves to be the film’s greater detriment as a standalone, with the technology taking more of a backseat in the universe of All of You. Instead, it is almost a replaceable element when considering the progression of the infidelity that arises. If you sub out the tech with, say, a community leader or any one thing or person with authority, it’s interchangeable and reduces its use as a plot device in the film.

All of You is inherently a romantic tragedy, but one thing seems clear by the film’s end. Soul Connex might have been right all along. Ultimately, once credits roll, the question is whether or not it was worth it to see this thesis play out onscreen. As far as onscreen toxic romances are concerned, this one reaps few rewards.

All of You played as a part of the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival.