Ryusuke Hamaguchi breaks you gradually, then ‘All of a Sudden’

Soon after, a chance encounter leads her to attend a one-man play led by aged Japanese actor Gorô Kiyomiya (Kyōzō Nagatsuka) and featuring impromptu cameos by his nonverbal autistic grandson Tomoki (Kodai Kurosaki), a production whose tale is spun from stories of demolishing harmful psych wards in Italy, and urging the rethinking of medical possibilities. Afterwards, an emotionally moved Marie-Lou—who speaks Japanese—connects with the show’s similarly named (and similarly bilingual) director Mari Morisaki (Tao Okomoto), leading to a tremendous, hour-long centerpiece: a walk-and-talk conversation that takes up an hour of screentime, as the day goes from dusk, to nightfall, and back to dawn.

During the course of this evening, the two connect in a manner that, although arguably platonic on paper, is colored with the richness of subdued romance. But regardless of Hamaguchi’s intent, their dynamic has a countdown clock: Mari is in the throes of a resurgent cancer and has only months or weeks to live, a revelation that in turn becomes the catalyst for their quickly blossoming friendship, which both actresses approach with immense dynamism even amidst their reserve. Their discussions range from personal fears, to facts and trivia about one another (where they each studied and learned the other’s language) to the firm grip of capitalism constraining both their professions, a system against which they bristle while also working within it.

In "All of a Sudden," Virginie Efira (center) plays a Parisian nursing home director.

Courtesy of NEON

This latter conversation becomes explanatory at times, down to involving diagrams scribbled on the nursing home white board, and thus brings to mind Boots Riley’s soon-to-be-released Marxist farce I Love Boosters. However, Hamaguchi’s exposition is far less for the sake of instruction or finger wagging, and seeks more to establish the emotional and economic limitations against which Mari and Marie-Lou are constantly fighting. Their contradictions stem from trying to codify dignity through their work, a process that inevitably makes them part of the very hegemonies that create their biggest blockades.

However, while All of a Sudden features humanitarian and anti-capitalist themes aplenty, it’s far from a communist tome in either style or thematic approach. Its focus, first and foremost, is the careful construction of quiet, interpersonal, and visually traditional drama across three hours and change, which becomes a herculean feat given the movie’s surprisingly intimate scope. But if there’s any filmmaker up to the task, it’s Hamaguchi, whose scenes of protracted exchanges, although filmed statically, feature life in all its hues silently erupting from beneath constrained exteriors.

Tao Okomoto as Mari Morisaki in "All of a Sudden."

Courtesy of NEON

This has been the filmmaker’s M.O. for many years, though working with French actors (and in a French setting) allows him a different, more free-flowing mode of physical articulation, compared to the relative social restraint Japanese performers often navigate. This is a distinction of which even his characters are aware. Mari and Marie-Lou’s conversations frequently touch on these differing cultural expectations, thus centering the very social coding that has long defined Hamaguchi’s drama, and which he’s now forced to step outside. All of a Sudden is as much about a blossoming friendship (and possible romance) as it is about its own making, and the novel economic and social structures that allow the movie to take its specific form. So often, arthouse darlings from across the world are given the boon of French budgets, but the new environment seldom suits them (as was recently the case with Iranian virtuoso Asghar Farhadi, whose Parallel Tales was panned at the festival). However, Hamaguchi is keenly attuned to the altered modes in which he’s working here, and by centering them in his story, he allows his characters’ cross-cultural conversations to touch organically on the hurdles in their path.

By centering elder care, and palliative care, All of a Sudden becomes a confrontation of death—in Mari’s case, yet another impossible-to-crack code, born of her own genetics—but the film is anything but confrontational in tone. If anything, it’s calmly accepting of the arrival of immobility, the loss of memory, and the specter of mortality, the emotional effects of which arrive in sudden blows after lurking just beneath the surface. This, in the process, allows it to become quietly life affirming (and gently amusing) the longer it goes on—not only despite the fragility of the human condition, and the human form, but precisely because of it.