For a film called All Of A Sudden, very little happens suddenly in Hamaguchi Ryusuke’s sensitive portrayal of friendship and care. The director (Drive My Car) has a particularly patient style of filmmaking that is not universally appealing, but it captures humanity in all its messy earnestness.
All Of A Sudden follows Marie-Lou (Virginie Efira), a newly appointed care home manager training her staff in the revolutionary “humanitude.” It is the latest hollow healthcare branding scheme that treats putting time and care into looking after the elderly as being radical. Nurses treat dementia patients in a very specific way, using their first names repeatedly, making eye contact, and engaging in as deep a conversation as they can manage. It’s depressing that treating the elderly like human beings is treated like some advanced care plan. Mainly, the nurses complain that they simply do not have the time and resources to execute such in-depth care.
Marie Lou’s life revolves around her work; she lives and sleeps on the site where she works, no husband, no kids; her life seems incredibly small. Her world becomes a bit bigger when she steps in to help an autistic teenager, Tomoki (Kurosaki Kodai), who she finds chasing buses in town. Here she meets Japanese artist Mari (Okamoto Tao), who invites her to watch her new play. This show sees Tomoki’s grandfather Goro (Nagatsuka Kyozo) monologue about age, history, and health.
The film asks audiences to watch an uncomfortably large chunk of this artistically minded play. Midway through, Tomoki wanders onto the stage and interrupts it. The play carries on as the teenage boy runs around the staging.
A Slow Exploration Of Female Friendship
The almost three-hour runtime deeply and sensitively explores Mari and Marie-Lou’s friendship. It follows minute details of their relationship, showing small, insignificant moments. It’s not a style of filmmaking that everyone will find rewarding. Scenes play out long after most directors would have made the cut, lingering on awkward and comfortable silences and small gestures like making tea.
Some genuinely meaningful moments get lost in this languid exploration of two women finding themselves in each other. There is a much better, meaningful movie nestled in here. In fact, the big themes like mourning people who are still alive and the indiginity of death get lost in the malaise.
Mari reveals she has terminal cancer. While it takes All of a Sudden in a different direction in the second act, fear not, the drama doesn’t become a Beaches-style weepy. It tackles the Big C of it all in a rather matter-of-fact, level-headed way. The movie also follows Marie Lou’s frustration with retraining her workplace, frequently butting heads with a hard-nosed nurse, Sophie (Marie Bunel). The film is at its best when exploring the problems with the French social care system, rather than Mari’s pain, with the two topics not always intertwining well together.
The duo has a pleasant platonic chemistry between them, despite their personality differences. Marie Lou is restrained and uptight; Mari is a creative free thinker, although neither comes across as too much of a parody. Together they bounce off each other to create one gentle, well-rounded person. They muse about life, tell each other anecdotes, and contemplate death on the bank of the Seine, in the garden, in the care home dining room.
A Great Film Nestled In The Middle Of A Long, Uneven Script
Mid-way through, All of a Sudden stops for a TED talk about capitalism. The two women take to the whiteboard to try to fix the world’s rights by pointing out the vicious cycle of the flawed system that is late-stage capitalism. It’s a great scene full of fantastic points, but doesn’t quite fit into this narrative. The movie contains numerous philosophical statements, but they are so densely packed into this overlong runtime that their meaning gets lost. You’ll be forgiven by struggling to concentrate on the sheer amount of dialogue crammed into the film. By the sixth or seventh big speech, the information doesn’t quite go in like it should.
All of a Sudden struggles with tone. On paper, it explores serious topics like the care system and facing death. But, it goes on these unusual side quests into Mari-Lou’s unusual care tactics that feel like comedy sketches amid a serious idea. For example, a scene where the elderly residents are encouraged to rub each other’s feet goes on and on, and is played for laughs. Then it goes back to what should be a poignant moment. It’s whiplash-inducing stuff.
A Minimalist Exploration Of Female Friendship
The film is a feat for Efre, who speaks three languages in All of a Sudden. She impressively code-switches between Japanese, French and English throughout, her character handily having studied in Japan as a young woman. Tao gives a naturalistic and downplayed performance as a woman confronting inevitability. Both performances suit Hamaguchi’s austere style of filmmaking.
All of a Sudden is starkly constructed as well to feel as naturalistic and gentle as possible. Samuel Andreyev’s score is sparing, Azusa Yamazaki’s editing humble, DP Alain Guichaoa’s camera work unobtrusive. There is a lack of cinematicness to proceedings that won’t appeal to everyone, and its dedication to gentleness is generally frustrating.
While the relationship between the two women is genuinely moving because they are exactly what the other one needs, some of the noise around them muddles the film’s meaning. The extended scenes of the play and the care home activities hold back a beautifully poignant script. The movie is completely devoid of clichés and cinematic stereotypes, and the script removes any artificiality. In some places, it’s genius; in others, it sucks the energy from proceedings.
This is a long film, and it feels this way. Ryusuke Hamaguchi has a knack for focusing in on life’s details, letting things unfold naturally, finding character details in the mundane. Some audiences will find All of a Sudden life-affirming and inspiring. Others will think this film is like paint drying, focusing on life’s most boring moments. There is certainly a very good film in here, but it’s surrounded by baggage that softens some of the movie’s more important moments.
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