“Perfect Strangers” has been remade more than 20 times since 2016

ONE evening seven old friends—three couples and a divorcee—meet for a dinner party. The psychiatrist in the group proposes a game: each person will put his or her phone on the table and when they receive a call, text, Whatsapp message or email, they must answer or read the message aloud. All agree, for they have nothing to hide. Or so they claim.

The exercise, as it first plays out in “Perfect Strangers”, an Italian film of 2016 directed by Paolo Genovese, inevitably causes chaos, revealing affairs, an accidental pregnancy and closeted homosexuality. The film made more than US$30 million worldwide; its screenplay won a prize at the Tribeca Film Festival. It has since been remade in more than 20 countries—which is perhaps the highest tally of any film, certainly any made in recent years. An Icelandic version was scheduled to be released on Jan 6 and a Danish iteration is expected to follow later in 2023.

Why is “Perfect Strangers” ripe for adaptation? It helps that the story has a straightforward plot structure that allows the screenwriter to tease out cultural nuances, says Annette Insdorf of Columbia University. The Italians dine on gnocchi and the Icelandic on reindeer. The French guests bring wine; their South Korean counterparts offer paper towels, symbolic of good luck.