Everything Everywhere All At Once

“L’orgasme cosmique”

United States, 2022. Dir Dan Kwan & Daniel Scheinhert

Going into the screen of EEAAO, I was sceptical about the hype the movie had generated over the past few month. As usual, every A24 release is an event for anyone who loves cinema and their trailers are often so well edited that you can easily get sucked into a universe of high expectation, only to be then perhaps disappointed. As a Michelle Yeoh and Stephanie Hsu fan, I kept a cool head as I secretly and impatiently watched the light go down.

This is the story of the hard working owner of a Laundromat, Evelyn (Michelle Yeoh), with her husband Waymond (Ke Huy Quan) and their daughter Joy (Stephanie Hsu). Evelyn is on the verge of a nervous breakdown as she finds herself surrounded by piles of paperwork to declare her taxes, a husband who at first glance seems useless and overly apologetic, and a daughter who is longing for a meaningful connection with her mother only to be pushed away repetitively through Evelyn’s many chores, worries and lack of empathy. The presence of Evelyn’s hard to please dad, Gong Gong (the one and only James Wong), adds to her feelings of inadequacy and shame.

All of these storylines are set up efficiently within the first half an hour, and the chaos that surrounds Evelyn is depicted wonderfully; watching Yeoh commanding the screen by telling off everyone around her made me feel both exhausted and excited; I was like ‘oh my god please read me to filth Queen Yeoh‘. At that moment, I felt ready for Evelyn to let loose and she did not disappoint me.

I am still wrapping my head around the concept so to avoid spoilers and simplify things, I’m only going to sum it up for you. From the moment her husband from another world makes contact with Evelyn by giving her the choice to enter the multiverse to fight the mysterious bad bitch who’s killing off other versions of Evelyn, she stumbles. Her most human response is to bury her head in the sand, lying on the floor wanting to go home. It was interesting to see her revert to an almost childlike version of herself as opposed to the strong headed matriarch that she normally is. As she gradually learns to master the art of verse jumping, the big evil reveals itself to Evelyn, momentarily borrowing from the horror genre. What a great villain entrance.

It is during the second half of the film that the movie absolutely shattered my expectation in every possible and delightful way. Some narrow minded people might categorise those as WTF moments; yes, I am talking about you guys who walked out halfway through the movie. Probably heterosexuals. Honestly though, I have never seen anything like it before and I want to thank the Daniels’ brain for creating such bonkers fighting sequences. Special shoutout to my comedy queen Jenny Slate who makes an appearance as one of the baddie’s minion. I want this to be clear though: I am against animal violence but seeing Slate fighting with her tiny dog on a leash using it as a projectile against Yeoh was absolutely priceless.

From that moment on, I feel like the Daniels fully let loose and crafted some of the most singular sequences that I am sure A24 will be proud to add to their portfolio. There is a heartbreakingly funny short scene between two rocks talking to one another and it cracked me up. There is such heartfelt generosity and creative abundance behind each world depicted in the multiverse that no matter how absurd they might look, the Daniels have managed to create micro storylines in each that are just as beautiful, wholesome, credible and relatable. Watching Jamie Lee Curtis and Yeoh being a couple with hot dog sausage hands and playing piano with their feet shouldn’t work on paper, but it does!

What also took me by surprise in EEAAO is the emotional punch it delivers. Usually when a film goes wild and has ambition as big as the universe, you tend to lose some of the tightness in the structure of the writing. I mean, how do you come back from a finger eating buffet? The film does an incredible job at maintaining the focus on our central Evelyn, always keeping us grounded in her dysfunctional and miserably relatable life. The emotional core of the film revolves around the family nucleus, focusing on the bond between the mother and daughter. I loved the fact that they didn’t turn Evelyn’s daughter, Joy, into a stereotypical angry lesbian because the issue between them was never about being queer but rather a lack of communication that drove them further apart. It also touches on the generational trauma that Evelyn inherited from her emotionally distant father that in turn, she’s passing on to her own daughter.

The relationship between Evelyn and her husband Waymond is also central to the film. While Evelyn is too busy pushing everything and everyone away, Waymond brings it all back together, giving us a beautiful life lesson on gratitude. ‘I would have loved to do my laundry and taxes with you‘ still resonates in me.

I would like to salute the Daniels on their cinematic, pop culture references. Reinterpreting the original Matrix movie better than any dumb writers from Warner Brother studios in Resurrection, or reenacting the iconic Odyssey of Space opening, Disney’s Ratatouille but make it racoon, and one particularly soulful scene shared between Yeoh and and Ke Huy Quan reminiscing of Wong Kar Wai’s In The Mood For Love and 2046. I adored their creative take on those iconic movies, grounding us even more in their wild universe.