All of a Sudden

Working in France for the first time, Drive My Car director Ryûsuke Hamaguchi’s has made a masterpiece to measure your life by. In the Parisian suburbs, Marie-Lou (Virginie Efira) works to transform a private eldercare facility by introducing Humanitude, a compassionate approach that places dignity and human connection above corporate efficiency. Her idealism meets resistance from an exhausted nursing staff, but her understanding of care deepens after a chance encounter with Mari (Tao Okamoto), an enigmatic Japanese playwright living with terminal cancer. As an unexpected friendship develops, the two women find themselves drawn into philosophical conversations about mortality, care, and the systems that shape our lives.

Loosely inspired by a real exchange of letters between a philosopher and an anthropologist, Hamaguchi’s quietly expansive film studies the fragile structures that bind us to one another. Anchored by luminous, Cannes-winning performances from Efira and Okamoto, Hamaguchi finds profound drama in conversation, observation, and the spaces between people. Patient and deeply humane, All of a Sudden considers what it means to care for another person and how, in confronting mortality, we might discover new ways of being together.

An unassumingly momentous miracle. All of a Sudden, the Japanese director’s gorgeous new feature, is the rarest type of film, not merely good enough to remind you what cinema can be, but great enough to remind you what life can be.

Jessica Kiang, Variety

The result is a treasure, a transcendent film whose power is capable of rekindling one’s hope in humanity. It’s an invitation for those in the grasp of despair to maybe stay a little longer among the living.

Carlos Aguilar, The Playlist