Everything Everywhere All at Once, the true multiverse of madness [critique]

A big surprise at the American box office preceded by some pretty crazy word of mouth, the new A24 production lives up to its promises. A fascinating UFO, with Michelle Yeoh at the heart of the multiverse… and in search of herself.

Updated August 30, 2024: A big winner at the 2023 Oscars, where it notably won the awards for best film and best director, UFO Everything Everywhere All at Once is broadcast for the first time in clear time on French television, this Friday evening at 9 p.m. on France 5. The feature film by the duo Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert will also be available for free and in streaming from Saturday August 31 on the France Télévisions website, for 30 days.

Article from August 30, 2022: Everything Everywhere All at Once begins as a pocket family drama: Chinese immigrant and laundromat owner Evelyn Wang (Michelle Yeoh) seems at the end of her rope, unable to communicate with her daughter (Stephanie Hsu) and her husband (Ke Huy Quan), fed up with her work… We sense the underlying depression when, suddenly, the first break in tone. During a meeting with a tax inspector who has decided to make her life difficult (Jamie Lee Curtis, amazing), an alter ego of her husband appears to her, and confides in her that she is the only one capable of saving the multiverse from a strange entity that has come to sow chaos.

Everything Everywhere All at Once as told by the Daniels

Evelyn then becomes able, through improbable movements, to summon the skills of her “doubles” from parallel universes, so many worlds where her life would have been totally different. From there, it is very tempting to summarize EEAAO to the list of its ingredients: “May contain traces of Hong Kong cinema (martial arts will be central), Cloud Atlas, Groundhog Day, Matrix (the meta side and the figure of the chosen one), Michel Gondry, In the Mood for Love..”

But that would be to make little of the meticulousness with which Daniel Scheinert and Daniel Kwan, aka the “Daniels”, their nickname, twist all these assumed quotes to tell the story of their protagonist's quest for identity. With a crazy idea every five minutes, they casually knit together a cinematic language that is as overflowing with generosity as it is efficient in terms of dramaturgy. This inner adventure is obviously a little too long and messy to keep the balance perfectly for 2 hours and 19 minutes, but the Daniels make a point of constantly surprising and manage to touch the heartstrings in the most absurd situations – the universe where people have sausage fingers could well bring a few tears to your eyes.

Cosmic mess

A film as full as an egg, a big mess on a cosmic scale led at a cracking pace, and whose success lies in the exploration of the extraordinarily large (the entire multiverse) to resolve an a priori infinitely small matter – the existential crisis of a mother of foreign origin, stuck in her life. Enough, by the way, to give a hell of a slap to Marvel and its very timid Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. And what could look from afar like a simple mausoleum to the glory of Michelle Yeoh (in Olympic form) quickly turns into a reflection on her status and a joyful tribute to all the Asian actors underused by Hollywood: the eternal James Hong has not had so much to play for a long time and Ke Huy Quan (the Half-Moon of Indiana Jones and Data of Goonieswho has since become a stuntman and even assistant director to Wong Kar-Wai on 2046 !) has all the space necessary to deploy a deliciously Chaplinesque game, between physical humor and pure despondency.

Guaranteed Fart Free

Optimistic and humanistic without wallowing in corniness, the film also continues the work of its directors begun with Swiss Army Mantheir previous feature released directly on DVD in our country. They already explored the ontological path, but through the farts of Daniel Radcliffe's corpse: expurgated of this trivial and gag-like aspect, Everything Everywhere All at Once basically follows the same line scrupulously, assuring that all the answers to the existential void are within us, or at least within reach. In both cases, enlightenment and hope are based on practically nothing, in this case on a fart or a succession of incongruous gestures.

Everything Everywhere All at Once, this Friday August 30 on Canal+