We Are Who We Are (BBC Three) Stream It or Skip It

Bathed in stunning cinematography, We Are Who We Are transcends the boundaries of TV drama through its cinematic power, with frequent freeze-frames that create snapshots of adolescent memories. We Are Who We Are is available now on BBC iPlayer.

Luca Guadagnino’s ability to immerse his audience in delicate, person-centred stories of identity and vulnerability is renowned; for example, Call Me By Your Name in 2018 was a sun-drenched tale of desire and sexual awakening. The journey we took alongside Elio was bittersweet, intoxicating and sensual as we bathed in the complex emotions of adolescence and his emerging sexual identity. In his first foray into television, Guadagnino brings his trademark person-centred approach to episodic drama with an eight-part coming-of-age story that is vivid, poetic, and beautiful in its direction, performances, and cinematography.

In We Are Who We Are, we are allowed a brief entry into the private teenage world of Fraser (Jack Dylan Grazer) and Caitlin or ‘Harper’ (Jordan Kristine Seamón), two teenagers brought together by the military careers of their parents on a US base in Italy during 2016. Here, their emerging identities are intertwined with the friendships and family relationships surrounding them.

Opening with two episodes that mirror each other from different perspectives, we follow fourteen-year-old Fraser as he arrives in Italy from New York. His mothers, Sarah and Maggie (played by Chloe Sevigny and Alice Braga), are starting a new life on the Italian base. For Fraser, the move abroad is filled with anger, excitement and fear, with his first day spent floating around his new home, assessing each building and person with growing disdain. However, Fraser does find fleeting moments of pleasure in the sportsfield changing rooms, where a naked officer named Jonathan (Tom Mercier) evokes a flustered Fraser to freeze in his tracks, unaware that the older officer is his mother’s new assistant.

As the day progresses, Fraser finds himself invited to the beach by the social butterfly Britney (Francesca Scorcese). Still, despite Britney’s best efforts to flirt with him, it’s Caitlin or Harper who intrigues Fraser, her defiance and difference capturing his imagination and curiosity. In the second episode, we see this day through Harper’s eyes, and the episode ends as a new, urgent, and complicated friendship forms between two teenagers desperate for a connection. It is within the nuanced relationship between Fraser and Harper that We Are Who We Are sings with a rare beauty in the landscape of TV drama.

In Fraser and Harper’s relationship, there are no simple rules, as both explore their sexual orientation, gender identity and emotions free from constraint, their feelings of difference tied to a need for experimentation. Fraser and Harper need each other’s company as they gather new experiences and explore personal boundaries in a world where adult notions of love, respect, and identity feel vague and alien to their own experience.

WE ARE WHO WE ARE Stream It or Skip It BBC Three / HBO

There are no cliffhanger endings, no dramatic twists and turns, and no lazy teenage clichés in Guadagnino’s immersive story. Instead, he focuses on the daily interactions and choices of a group of teens thrown together in a foreign land. Their lives are caught between the constructed Americana of the military base and the freedom of Italian culture – the action on-screen bound in a documentary-like realism, as conversations overlap, actions seem random, and joy descends sharply into anger or pain. This artistic beauty is never more powerfully reflected than in a house party during episode four, where the teens’ rampant behaviour hums with electricity, and our very presence feels like an invasion of privacy.

Bathed in stunning cinematography, We Are Who We Are transcends the boundaries of TV drama through its cinematic power, with frequent freeze-frames that create snapshots of adolescent memories. Add to this the genuinely outstanding performances of Jack Dylan Grazer and Jordan Kristine Seamón, and We Are Who We Are is one of the year’s most creative, engaging and beautiful TV dramas—an intimate portrait of emerging identity, conformity and rebellion that shines with originality, love and intensity.