Loss comes for all of us. Doesn’t matter how solitary a life we try to lead, we will lose something — an item, a memory, even ourselves. With each loss, there’s a transition period in which we come to terms with our new situation. How well or how poorly we acclimate is dependent on many factors, but, with luck, acclimation turns into acceptance and we’re able to move on. Exploring this concept, to a large degree, is co-writer/director Yen Tan’s (1985) All That We Love, having its world premiere during Tribeca Film Festival 2024, which starts with a small, personal incident of loss that slowly reveals its complexity within.
With the death of her dog Tanner (Wiley), Emma (Margaret Cho) finds herself in a strange in between place, compounded by changes in her relationships at work, with her best friend Stan (Jesse Tyler Ferguson), and her daughter Maggie (Alice Lee). But when an unexpected condolence card arrives, Emma finds herself considering reconnecting with part of herself long believed disconnected.
Margaret Cho as Emma in ALL THAT WE LOVE. Photo courtesy of Tribeca Film Festival.
The script from Tan and co-writer Clay Liford (Slash) utilizes the death of Tanner as a tangible and devastating thing that impacts owners, but also as a powerful metaphor. As the first, the film depicts the emptiness that the lack of an expected presence of another living soul creates. Suddenly, the nose and paw prints on windows, the hair on the floor, and the silence, unexpectedly turned very loud, and take on new meaning, resulting in someone who’s almost entirely dysregulated and prone to making poor choices. This can translate to lashing out, falling into old habits, or generally holding on too tightly to the things that one stills has. Perhaps because so much of Cho’s performance is low-key and internal, one might mistake Emma’s mourning the loss of Tanner as typical for a pet owner who’s been devoted for so long; however, the metaphor that Tanner represents is what creates the second of the one-two punch of the film.
An understated component of the film, Tanner is not merely a dog to Emma, he represents the final piece of a part of Emma’s life she’d long thought she’d made piece with. Keeping thing simple as to avoid spoiling significant components of the narrative: we learn that Tanner belonged to Emma and her then-husband, both of whom loved the puppy, but was left to Emma when the husband left. In the present, Emma lives alone, is the co-owner of a company in flux, and has a daughter who is preparing for a major life-event. With the death of Tanner, the part of Emma’s life that was this whole family is now completely gone, requiring that Emma process the absence of this consistent, unwavering presence while having to deal with a total reset of her life. By slowly revealing, through small pieces of conversation, through reconnection, and through the avoidance of pain and discomfort, that Tanner exists as both living creature and metaphor, All That We Love transforms from a mere dramedy into a compelling and often heart-wrenching exploration of love, loss, and the pain & restoration that accompanies closure.
Helping to elevate what could be a maudlin production are precise technical approaches that interweave to create nearly imperceptible additions. It’s cinematographer Jon Keng (Burn; Pinball: The Man Who Saved the Game) who gives the whole of this world a natural look and utilizes a great deal of stillness in the shots, a choice that gives the action within the frame a sense of immobility, while using additional shots for coverage and the rare zoom, which gives a sequence which utilizes it a sense of displacement. The camerawork and visual language convey Emma’s own internal distress, which, when combined with Cho’s own stillness (not to be confused with robotic or disconnected), one gets the sense of a person struggling to break free from a place in their life they hadn’t realized had confined them. The scoring from Jon Natchez (The Climb; Light from Light) is delicate throughout, never leading the audience to emotion, and underscoring the performances so as to raise the actors in their scenework so that their delivery of the script evokes lingering melancholy. The impressive thing is that the score and the cinematography work so seamlessly to support the script that there’s never a sense of hopelessness in All That We Love; instead, one feels as though they are wrapped in a supportive embrace, a safe space to feel what needs to be felt, to say what needs to be said, and heal.
In order to provide some greater context about why All That We Love resonated so profoundly that I found myself sobbing through most of it, allow a brief story. In the spring of 2010, my then- fiancée/now-wife and I adopted a puppy from a local Charlotte, North Carolina, shelter and she, Kaylee Pearl, lived with us until December 29th, 2021. Kaylee was a constant companion when I job-searched full time, kept me company grading when I became an adjunct at a community college, and did her best as a big sister to a rambunctious baby who joined us in 2015. A year later, Kaylee would suffer an injury to her spine that would change how she lived, but she didn’t stop finding joy in things. She wouldn’t come upstairs after that, but she was constantly underfoot and interested in what our children were doing, especially the second, very new, deceptively quiet child. Her passing left a vacancy in our home, but it also signaled a closing of a chapter — of a period of time where things were truly uncertain financially, where buying a house and having children were unknown terrors made easier by the consistent unwavering love of Kaylee’s kind heart and eagerness for cuddles. The times in which I look for her at night to make sure she’s comfortable are fewer, though there are moments when I think I see her out of the corner of my eye, so she’s never quite too far from us. Her time with us was a gift that continues to bear fruit — something which Tan and Liford tap into as the true narrative of the film about closing chapters and being open to new ones comes into focus.
L-R: Myself, Kaylee, and EoM Editor Crystal Davidson in June 2010. Photo Credit: Liesa Rattazzi.
As this reviewer is keen to say about the John Wick series, it’s not about the dog. Well, it is, but it’s not. As much as the puppy in the first John Wick (2014) represented an opportunity for mourning and healing, a bridge that would allow John to survive the loss of his wife by having a reason to get up in the morning (illustrated by the difference between his suicidal ideation before and lack of it after the puppy’s arrival), so does the puppy within All That We Love represent another type of death that was, perhaps, not fully mourned until Tanner left Emma. Tan and Liford understand this well, using the loss of Tanner, not as a tool for emotional manipulation, but as a real and weighted event whose ripple extends outward in slow and surprisingly ways. In concert with performances from a central cast who deliver consistently authentic responses to what could otherwise be a rote script of personal healing, one comes away from All That We Love … not refreshed … but optimistic about the things that we cling to being things that maybe are safe to release and move on from.
Screening during Tribeca Film Festival 2024.
In select theaters November 7th, 2025.
For more information, head to the official Tribeca 2024 All That We Love webpage.
Final Score: 4.5 out of 5.
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Categories: In Theaters, Reviews
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