Caretaking and Friendship Intertwine In the Stunning Drama ‘All of a Sudden’
“All of a Sudden” is the third film from Japanese auteur Ryusuke Hamaguchi to compete in The Cannes Film Festival (his 2021 film “Drive My Car” won Cannes’ prize for Best Screenplay), which made for plenty of buzz around its premiere this year. Despite a daunting runtime of three hours and sixteen minutes and a start time of eight o’clock in the morning, there was a palpable readiness in the theater at my screening; we knew we were in good hands.
Deliberately paced and extraordinarily performed, the film is propelled forward in its more languid sequences by a stirring central relationship and a moving message of holding on to the joy of the present when faced with an uncertain future.
The film is co-written by Hamaguchi and Léa Le Dimna and based on the novel “You and I — The Illness Suddenly Get Worse” by Makiko Miyano and Maho Isono. The film concerns the unlikely friendship between Marie-Lou Fontaine (Virginia Efira), director of the memory care unit at an assisted living facility in Paris, and Mari Morisaki (Tao Okamoto), a Japanese theater director who is directing a play in Paris about one man’s personal crusade against the inhumane conditions of psychiatric hospitals. Each is fluent in the other’s native tongue, and they quickly find obvious commonalities in one another’s line of work.
Mari’s play resonates deeply with Marie-Lou’s attempt to integrate the “Humanitude” approach to treating her dementia patients, a controversial mode of care which prioritizes individual mobility and giving those afflicted a chance to walk and stand as often as possible. This would require additional training for the already overworked staff and also increase risk of falls, causing a rift between Marie-Lou and some of the long-serving nurses at the facility.
As Mari-Lou and Mari become closer, their conversations drift from frustrations in their work and their educational backgrounds towards their most paramount commonality: their respective relationships with death. Working with dementia patients, that comes with such a disease; Mari, diagnosed with terminal cancer and given six months to live, must consider her latest play as nothing less than her life’s work — each knows intimately how precious the present is.
The film is split into chronological chapters, each representing a different day in June of 2025, a structure that further emphasizes the importance of acknowledging that the future is out of our control and the present is all we have.
Hamaguchi is adept at dramatizing bureaucratic tensions, and his light touch gives the many staff meeting scenes – where head nurse Sophie (Marie Bunel) butts heads with Marie-Lou over the integration of Humanitude – an almost documentary-like grace and spontaneity. His dynamic sense of blocking and pacing is on full display in his staging of the ever-shifting conversations between Marie-Lou and Mari, particularly the middle third of the film which takes place entirely during the early evening and night shift at the memory care facility.
Cinematographer Alan Guichaoua’s work in this stretch is frankly tremendous; there are several shots with little to no light, with one scene’s only source of light being Marie-Lou’s cigarette embers. Hamaguchi’s propensity for spare, static shots of adjoining body parts or characters being quietly observant serves this film well as it focuses on the painstaking caretaking of the dementia patients, all guiding hands and labored gaits.
Only late in the film, during one of Marie-Lou and Mari’s final scenes together, do they face their frustration at their time together being so finite. On a mountain in Kyoto, they express their desires to each other. In typical Hamaguchi fashion, it’s reserved, but simply devastating. “I want to talk to you,” Mari tells Marie-Lou. “Me too,” she replies. “Not about the past, but the future,” Mari confesses. “I wouldn’t know what to say,” admits Marie-Lou. How true, how timeless a sentiment this is. It makes for a fitting gracenote to a gorgeously crafted film.
“All of a Sudden” had its world premiere at The Cannes Film Festival on May 15, 2026.
Regions: Cannes