I first became aware of the 2016 Italian film Perfect Strangers (Perfetti Sconosciuti) directed by Paolo Genovese in university, watching it as part of a film analysis class. I also remember catching glimpses of it while working at a local cinema. Generally enjoying it for its novel concept and well-done execution, Perfect Strangers stayed in the back of my mind for a while after. Fast-forward to 2018, and while scrolling YouTube, I found a trailer for a new Mexican movie with the exact same title, and I swear I had already watched this exact movie already.
Now, this is nothing new — remaking foreign movies in different languages tends to be rather successful. A Man Called Otto, a remake of the Swedish A Man Called Ove, has recently been released to some success, and CODA, a remake of French film La Famille Bélier, won several Academy Awards including Best Picture. This instance became slightly less regular when I saw several more trailers for the movie, in even more languages, in an even shorter amount of time.
Since 2016 — yes, that's only seven years —Perfect Strangers has already been remade 24 times. Holding the Guinness World Record for the most remade movie in cinema history, there has been over two dozen Perfect Strangers remakes, though at times they go under different titles such as Vietnam's Blood Moon Party and France's Nothing To Hide, for countries all over Europe and Asia, all with the same seven protagonists, all with at least roughly and at most exactly, the same premise.
The Themes in 'Perfect Strangers' Are Universal
What may peel back the layers of this odd phenomenon is to explain the premise of Perfect Strangers. As famous writer Gabriel García Márquez once said: "All human beings have three lives: public, private, and secret.” This is the quote the original Perfect Strangers film used in its marketing, and is one of the central themes of the story. In Perfect Strangers, seven life-long friends meet up for a dinner party to celebrate a lunar event, and to prove they have nothing to hide, they play a little game. All seven phones are placed on the table, all texts are read out loud, and all calls are put on speaker for everyone to hear.
This goes about as well as one would expect, with closet skeletons of all shapes and sizes tumbling out, marriages tested, friendships ripping apart as the night slowly unravels. Along with Garcia's three lives idea, Perfect Strangers has themes of how mobile phones take our privacy away, though it's less of an anti-phones message and more about the tools we use to keep things from our loved ones, how possessive we can get over our phones and by extension, our inner demons.
From a purely practical standpoint, it's clear why Perfect Strangers has so many remakes. As a very dialogue and plot heavy movie, it's very easy to produce, and doesn't require a James Cameron budget. The events of the dinner all take place in one house, and only requires less than a dozen actors and their phones. Bottle movies are a fantastic subgenre for burgeoning filmmakers and those without a lot of money to go around, with the script being the only thing that has to work.
However, for a bottle movie like Perfect Strangers to work, it really, really has to work. The audience has to really care about the people at the table to be invested in their dysfunction, and while I don't have it in me to watch a couple dozen versions of the same movie, the original Perfect Strangers has an incredibly strong script and performances. It's a very universal feeling story, especially in our modern times — no matter where you are in the world, we all have been to a drama-filled dinner, and we've all used our phones as a very private space, and maybe you've endured the horror of that being exposed.
The Missing English-Language Remake of 'Perfect Strangers'
If you look through the list of Perfect Strangers remakes, you'll see a diverse range of languages with one notable omission: English. You'd think, with the history of English-language remakes, there was bound to be one for the most remade film of all time, but you'd be surprisingly mistaken. There's no British, Australian, or American remake of Perfect Strangers, though there is an English dub of Nothing to Hide, despite the potential for strong and iconic ensemble casts reveling in this "bomb under the table" drama.
This wasn't for a lack of trying. An American remake of Perfect Strangers was on the table all the way back in 2017, with Issa Rae of Insecure set to write and star in 2019. Unfortunately, the studio to acquire the rights was The Weinstein Company, and needless to say, the film was put on hold after it went under. The film, as of 2019, is still supposedly on the table, now under Spyglass Media Group and Eagle Pictures, still with Rae's involvement, but things have been very quiet since then.
Though, people are so wrapped up in whether they could make an English, or Dutch, or Klingon remake of Perfect Strangers, that perhaps we need to think about whether we should at all. Subtitles have never gone out of fashion — if Parasite has taught us anything, the need for subtitles doesn't hinder a film's success. The original concept of Perfect Strangers is brilliant, but it's kind of only brilliant the first time you do it, especially when very few of these films change the premise up at all. The only difference seems to be, really, the nationality and language of the cast.
There are a lot of answers as to why Perfect Strangers in particular has been remade so many times while other foreign films aren't. It could be the lack of an English-language version, the play-like simplicity of the production, or the strength of the concept that translates so well into different cultures, or perhaps all of the above. But instead of waiting for the Hollywood remake that may never come, give the original Perfect Strangers film a try. (It is not recommended to try the game in real life, though — it's best to keep your secrets to yourself.)