Oscar winner Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s luminous, dialogue-heavy All of a Sudden runs 196 minutes, yet it never stutters, stumbles or stalls. Set in Paris, the Japanese auteur’s first foreign-language film tells the story of Marie-Lou (played by Virginie Efira), an elder-care facility director, and Mari (Tao Okamoto), a terminally ill Japanese theatre director.
Languorous, poetic and life-affirming, the film follows the women’s evolving friendship as Marie-Lou struggles to humanize resident care, while Mari mounts Up Close, No One Is Normal, a play about Italian psychiatrist Franco Basaglia, whose efforts dismantled mental hospitals in his homeland.
Riffing on politics and philosophy, including how capitalism creates aging societies, exhausts workers and lowers care standards, Hamaguchi and his stellar leads (who shared the best actress award at Cannes this year) shift effortlessly between theory and practice, between life and theatre, and between French and Japanese.
Their combined efforts “make the impossible possible” and bridge the gap between the outside world and the care facility, a real-world location, in a tender and thought-provoking film pairing actual patients with its professional cast.
All of a Sudden had its North American premiere at TIFF and has its theatrical release on Nov. 25 in the United States, with its Canadian release pending.
