All My Friends Hate Me

Directed by Andrew Gaynord

Running time: 1hr33 | REVIEWED BY CATHERINE BRAY

All My Friends Hate Me, directed by Andrew Gaynord

I have a soft spot for a certain type of British comedy. Four Weddings and a Funeral, Notting Hill, Bridget Jones’s Diary — I’ve seen them all multiple times. It’s not the romance. It’s not even the sex (although Renée/Hugh are undeniably hot). What I really dig in these films is the precision portraits of upper middle-class British types, their turns of phrase, their flaws, their neuroses. But they are usually rather rosy, flattering portraits — so thank goodness for the scabrous corrective offered by All My Friends Hate Me.

All My Friends Hate Me offers a symphony of hilarious awfulness, playing out across a 31st-birthday reunion of some uni mates at a country pile belonging to one of their number. Recurring leitmotifs include absolutely brutal humour verging on hazing, a would-be jovial fixation on alcohol, and their sublime obliviousness to their own complete dreadfulness. The only thing more stomach-churning than that obliviousness is when said obliviousness collapses into self-consciousness, as it does most starkly for lead character Pete (played by Tom Stourton, who also co-wrote the script and exec produced).

Pete is convinced that he has changed and grown since university years that he often seems to remember a little differently from his posse. He’s not very game for re-enacting student hijinks and his genuinely frightening buddies seem to regard him as a drag. But maybe he is a drag? This is one of those films (like recent Palme d’Or winner Triangle of Sadness) that aces with flying colours the neat trick of making a film utterly compulsive viewing even when most of the characters are designed to make your skin crawl.

It’s savage, excoriating work, realised on a modest budget, but laying bare the extravagant hideousness of a certain class of person. It does so from a place of such deep knowledge and keen observation that you’re forced to the conclusion that there’s probably at least some element of extremely unforgiving self-portraiture going on here. Perhaps it’s an act of atonement. Whatever, it’s very funny.

ALL MY FRIENDS HATE ME (2022) Written by Tom Palmer, Tom Stourton | Shot by Ben Moulden | Edited by Saam Hodivala