Yen Tan’s “All That We Love” is a quiet drama that’s surprisingly moving yet gentle, giving a well-known comedian a complex role to prove herself. And in this case, Margaret Cho defies expectations, bucking the caustic and bombastic persona we’ve grown used to seeing her bring to the screen for an on-screen performance that’s almost soft-spoken, a woman who genuinely feels lost among life’s many changes. “All That We Love” can feel like a bit of a balm at the end of a tough year (which I know many of us are just surviving), and its subdued, no-frills drama may be just the space one needs for a good cry.
Emma (Cho) is an empty nester whose beloved pet passes away quietly in her home. She’s still adjusting to the loss when her daughter, Maggie (Alice Lee), announces she’s leaving town to join her boyfriend in Australia, a shock that only further disrupts Emma’s life. To further complicate things, her ex-husband Andy (Kenneth Choi) returns from working abroad in Singapore, hoping to rekindle their relationship that was damaged by his alcoholism.
Despite the advice from her best friend, Stan (Jesse Tyler Ferguson), and even Andy’s sister Raven (Atsuko Okatsuka), Emma continues to meet Andy, possibly damaging her already tense relationship with her daughter.
Tan, who co-wrote the story with Clay Liford, strikes a delicate balance between all the upheaval in Emma’s life and the way she processes it. Sometimes, she’s too exacting at work, intimidating her coworkers, and adding more tension to her life. Other times, she’s struggling with various forms of grief and how it’s affecting her, wordlessly ambling through her apartment waiting to hear her dog return to her, something that other characters mentioned has happened to them in their dreams.
Although the movie is relatively quiet, and many of the most emotional scenes happen when characters decide not to share their reactions honestly in the moment, it’s even more intense to watch because the camera helmed by Jon Keng captures those missed cues, raised eyebrows, noisy throat clearings, and intentional orders of a heavier pour of alcohol.
Perhaps the standout feature of the movie is that Cho’s performance is unlike many (if any) we’ve seen from her before. She’s almost too quiet for once, only occasionally assertive, sometimes to her own detriment when pushing Stan’s warnings away from seeing Andy and causing a rift between them that unearths other pent-up frustrations. She’s restrained around Maggie, afraid that if she says the wrong thing, it will only further fracture their relationship. She’s struggling with grief in a way that not everyone can reasonably handle or cope with. Other times, she’s overwhelmed, quick to drink and say too much, not in a loud way, but in a way that saying something at the wrong place or time lands you in trouble.
The trickiest part is navigating the tenuous circumstance with her ex-husband, who, after years of severely struggling with alcoholism, finds himself back in LA trying to reconnect with Emma. Their cautious reunion is its own kind of emotional journey, from the grief of time lost to the lingering hurt over his exit from their lives. How Cho navigates these many frayed interactions feels so fascinating because it feels so unlike her. But it makes Emma that much more believable, if at times imperfect and frustrating to watch.
“All That We Love” might be a tough watch or just the thing to watch if you’ve recently felt overwhelmed with loss and the passage of time. Perhaps what’s so frustrating about Emma is that her mistakes, grief, fears, and desires feel deeply relatable; we are also susceptible to acting like fools in our moment of vulnerability. There are no outsized emotional meltdowns; just quiet moments we can all recognize.
As Emma navigates the feeling of being overwhelmed, of being unintentionally mean, or knowingly curious to see what going back to one’s ex would feel like, we join her for the ride. Because no one’s healing journey looks like another’s, and chances are, many of us have had our own mistakes to learn from, grief to sit with, and the need to stay open to forgiveness.
