Perfect Strangers

Perfect Strangers (2016) takes place over one dinner where seven friends put their phones on the table. The game is simple: every message that arrives will be read aloud and every call put on speaker. The person who proposes it wants to prove nobody at the table has anything to hide. No one can object, because objecting is itself a confession. The first half hour is comedy. Then the first message arrives. The cleverest thing is that the phones can change hands. One character suggests swapping, and from then on every message that arrives is attributed to the wrong person. Some secrets come out while others land on somebody else. There is also a lunar eclipse running outside throughout, which takes on its meaning at the close. This is the most remade film in cinema history. It entered the Guinness records in 2019 with eighteen versions and the number has kept growing; as of early 2024 it had been remade twenty four times in different languages. Many countries, Turkey among them, made their own. The reason is obvious: one room, seven actors, a low budget, and a premise that works in any culture. Paolo Genovese directed. The final scene makes you reconsider the whole film and causes argument. It runs 96 minutes. Good for: single location drama, sharp dialogue, and Italian cinema. Less good for: nobody is sympathetic and some of the revelations are uncomfortable.