Marching to Their Own Beat
In Luca Guadagnino’s We Are Who We Are, the residents of a military base fight against a life of rules.
‘ Iused to be a lot of things,” Army wife Jenny (Faith Alabi) admits. “Then I stopped being a lot of things. Truth is, I don’t know who I am anymore.”
Jenny’s dilemma is one that applies to every character in We Are Who We Are, a lyrical coming-of-age drama from Call Me by Your Name director Luca Guadagnino. Set on a U.S. Army base in Italy in 2016, the limited series follows a group of teens and adults who all used to be one thing or another, and are struggling to figure out who and what they’ve become.
The core of the story is the friendship between new kid Fraser ( Jack Dylan Grazer), a 14-year-old would-be fashion designer whose mother, Sarah (Chloë Sevigny), a colonel, has arrived to assume command of the base, and Caitlin ( Jordan Kristine Seamón), a cool kid whose lower-ranking father Richard (Kid Cudi) resents that he now has to take orders from a lesbian.
The base is an attempt to re-create local comforts in a foreign land, with mixed results. The commissary has Domino’s and KFC, but the whole place feels alien to Fraser, who whines, “Americans can only be happy in America.” “This is America,” Sarah’s wife, Maggie (Alice Braga), argues, not sounding convinced. For these characters, every line seems as blurry as the one between Italy and America: who your parents are and how you should treat one another; who you love and who you only lust after; and how you define your sexuality or gender. This fluidity seems natural for the kids, who are at an age where they can still easily try on and discard identities that don’t fit. But We Are Who We Are doesn’t lose sight of how some grown-ups desperately wish they could do the same — and how easily they can hurt their children and partners in the process.
Like a lot of cinema veterans working in TV for the first time, Guadagnino (who directs every episode, and co-writes with Paolo Giordano and Francesca Manieri) sees his new medium as “movies, but longer.” Huge swaths of time are spent lingering with the kids as they hang out on the beach or party at an empty house. But few transplants from the big screen to the small have as keen an eye, or ear, as Guadagnino. So the voyeuristic nature of the storytelling feels inviting rather than indulgent (mostly). The cinematography is often stunning, like a food-fight tableau that suggests a rambunctious Last Supper. The soundtrack mixes modern pop and hiphop with classical pieces — Blood Orange and the composer John Adams are crucial sonic guideposts — in a way that adds depth and tension to even the most leisurely afternoon, while making the emotional moments soar.
Grazer, who played Eddie the hypochondriac in It, hits every complicated note about Fraser, who at times can seem incredibly wise and at others a scarred, volatile kid trying and failing to seem more worldly than he is. Newcomer Seamón, meanwhile, is a real find: Caitlin has a different identity (and, at times, a different name) for every person in her life, but can be just as raw and vulnerable as Fraser, if not more. Seamón has screen presence to spare, so that the less Caitlin says out loud, the more her eyes are showing us what’s really going on. Sevigny and Cudi are both credibly military in their bearing, even though Sarah and Richard are otherwise so very different, while Braga and Alabi say a lot with a little about what it’s like to bend your life in service to a spouse who’s only vaguely aware of your sacrifices.
The Army has a culture built on conformity. We Are Who We Are, though, is a tale of nonconformists in a place foreign to the concept, in more ways than one. At one point, Fraser brags that the base has several thousand tons of explosives buried underneath. “But on the surface,” he observes, “everything seems copacetic.” In a later episode, he and Caitlin watch fireworks together. We Are Who We Are’s more metaphorical explosions can sometimes do big damage, but at others, they’re nothing short of beautiful.