‘All of a Sudden’ Review: Virginie Efira and Tao Okamoto are Luminous in Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s Life-Affirming Wonder [A] Cannes
There’s a moment early in Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s wondrous new film, All of a Sudden, where the camera focuses on an old photo of a woman as a pilot. There’s a matter-of-fact stillness to the image, as if we’re watching a documentary, when in truth we’re experiencing the beauty of Hamaguchi’s unique narrative storytelling style. Time hasn’t been so kind to the woman in the picture, as decades later, she’s living with Alzheimer’s, and the memories of who she is, let alone who she was, are fading. Yet maybe, with the right care, the perspective can change, and there won’t be a version of who she is or was, but rather a complete view of her as a whole person. That humanistic core found at the center of Hamaguchi’s filmography is fully realized in All of a Sudden, as the film’s characters cultivate empathy and attempt to untangle some of society’s most intricate webs. It’s a film that will not only remind audiences of the extraordinary power of art but also of the pain and beauty of being alive.
All of a Sudden first follows Marie-Lou (an extraordinary Virginie Efira), the director of Le Jardin de la Liberté (The Garden of Freedom), an elder care facility just outside of Paris. Marie-Lou is a passionate advocate for a care technique called “Humanitude,” which emphasizes the importance of autonomy and dignity for patients who are cognitively impaired. A technique with four pillars as thoughtful and simple as gaze, speech, touch, and verticality shouldn’t be controversial, yet its slow pace and costly training requirements have caused quite the stir. This is especially true for veteran nurse Sophie (Marie Bunel) and the institution’s financial backers, who are dubious of Marie-Lou and her methodology, pushing back on the technique and (in the case of her superiors) her request for salary increases for her staff. For Marie-Lou, her advocacy is personal as her mother died in an inadequate elder care home after she experienced early-onset Alzheimer’s at 65. It’s here that Hamaguchi finely threads the needle, introducing the complexities of operating within a Capitalist system that will always value money over people. Just as he explored the inherent clash between environment and industry in Evil Does Not Exist, the filmmaker poses similar queries here, exploring them with even greater depth.
When she heads home after a particularly difficult day at work, Marie-Lou notices a boy running next to her train with his arms stretched out wide. Something compels her to get off the train to check on him, and when she finds him alone, she sits with him under a tree until a quick rainstorm passes. Subtle moments like these are woven throughout All of a Sudden, reminding us of the power of intuition and the little coincidences that make life unique. Soon, Marie-Lou learns that the boy she’s been waiting with is Tomoki (Kodai Kurosaki), the neurodivergent grandson of actor Goro Kiyomiya (Kyôzô Nagatsuka). Goro arrives with his friend and theatre director, Mari Morisaki (a stunning Tao Okamoto), and, incredibly grateful to Marie-Lou for staying with Tomoki, they invite her to an upcoming performance of their new play, loosely translated as “Up Close No One Is Normal.” The abstract play was inspired by Italian reformer Franco Basaglia, the man responsible for the closure of Italy’s inhumane asylums, and something instantly clicks for Marie-Lou, especially when Tomoki spontaneously becomes part of the performance. Much like his exploration of theatre and performance in his Oscar-winning film, Drive My Car, the sequence that allows the one-man show to unfold seemingly in real-time is sublime, recalling the elegance of his previous works and the grit and vérité aesthetic of John Cassavetes. The stage isn’t just a space for artistic expression, but an entryway for Marie-Lou to realize that she isn’t alone in her way of thinking about the world.
The experience at the theater isn’t just transformative for Marie-Lou, but also for Mari. During a Q&A afterward, the two women share an intimate moment in Japanese within a sea of French speakers. This shared language gives them a sense of privacy, and in answering Marie-Lou’s thoughtful question, Mari feels compelled to share that she was diagnosed with terminal, metastatic cancer that has spread throughout her body. Later that night, she tells Marie-Lou that it was the first time she had publicly revealed her diagnosis. As she describes her condition and her relationship with it to Marie-Lou, she shares that she knows that one day, it will go downhill “all of a sudden.” It’s a revelation that feels like a shadow hanging over the film, and with Hamaguchi’s command of time’s contractions and expansions, a warning that we could be thrown off-kilter at any point. It’s not unlike Terms of Endearment in that, no matter how “prepared” one could feel, the strength of the film lies in how it plays with time in an honest way. A story’s build-up and preparation will feel false when compared to the unfair plans of real life, yet Hamaguchi’s command of time makes this feel authentic.
At first, it may seem like a cheeky bit of irony that a film with a 196-minute runtime would be titled All of a Sudden, but what makes Hamaguchi a singular director is just how he bends and controls our experience with time. Mundane, ordinary moments that other storytellers would ignore are put on center stage, as his expertly controlled camera directs our attention to the daily processes and idiosyncrasies of life in the elder care facility. Spending ample time during sessions with families working through their complicated relationships with those who’ve forgotten them, and allowing the camera to focus on objects important to residents who’ve recently passed away, gives the film an emotional weight that never feels forced. It’s also a necessary introduction to a place and way of working that will be essential to Marie-Lou and Mari’s friendship. That sense of ease and focus on the everyday continues as they leave the theater, walk and talk along the Seine, and go to The Garden of Freedom late that night. The two women quickly comment on how they share versions of the same name and it feels like they’re mirrors of each other, with Marie-Lou having studied anthropology in Japan and Mari having studied philosophy in France. The two can speak each other’s language, seamlessly flowing in and out of deep conversations about society’s imposing structures, their research areas, and their lives in both Japanese and French. Efira and Okamoto learned Japanese and French for their respective roles, and, while they both sounded incredibly impressive to my untrained ear, what’s beautiful about the way that the two actresses perform in each other’s language is in how they respond to each other and how quickly they’re able to convince us of the weight and strength of Marie-Lou and Mari’s relationship. It would be simplistic to call this moment simply the beginning of a beautiful friendship when Efira and Okamoto’s brilliant performances make it feel more like the alchemy that only exists between soulmates.
All of a Sudden takes place over the course of mere weeks in the summer of 2025, and it’s worth noting that about half of the film’s lengthy runtime is dedicated to the first few days of Marie-Lou and Mari’s immediate connection. Hamaguchi and his co-writer Léa Le Dimna craft a screenplay with such depth and meticulous structure that it’s surprising that it was adapted from a work of epistolary nonfiction (“You And I—The Illness Suddenly Gets Worse” by Maho Isono and Makiko Miyano). In one of the film’s most enlightening (and already debated) scenes, Mari conducts a spontaneous philosophy seminar for Marie-Lou on a whiteboard, drawing an involved diagram describing the failings of capitalism. It never feels like she’s preaching to Marie-Lou or that Hamaguchi is lecturing the audience. Instead, it feels remarkably gratifying to hear it described so simply and eloquently. For Hamaguchi, the environment and the body are connected. The individual and the collective impact each other. What’s so striking about this extended scene and the conversations between the two women is that Hamaguchi extends the philosophy of Humanitude and the work at The Garden of Freedom not only to Mari’s illness, but also to broader issues beyond the world of the film. Just as Mari is dying and her body will decide when it’s going to stop working, society as we know it is dying too. It’s surprising then to find the film overwhelming in its beauty and not in its sadness. How can the film feel so hopeful and life-affirming despite this acknowledgment of individual and communal death?
In a subtly transcendent moment of dialogue, Mari says, “Can you believe it’s only been a day and a half since the play?” In any other context, this could feel like a phrase you’d say to a friend or family member when you can’t believe how slowly time seems to be passing. But here, it has so much meaning. With the possibility of death looming, it’s a miracle that time has seemed to have slowed, or if not slowed, been filled with experiences that have made it richer. Marie-Lou describes the memories of the residents like time travel, where a specific experience can be incredibly vivid, but time is not necessarily linear anymore. For Marie-Lou, Mari, and Hamaguchi, there is so much importance and beauty in life’s fleeting moments, where one memorable day is a link in a chain. Death may be coming. It may be here. With All of a Sudden, Hamaguchi radically asks us to do what we can to make the impossible possible, finding the joy and the beauty in where we are now in spite of that.
This review is from the 2026 Cannes Film Festival where All of a Sudden had its world premiere In Competition. NEON will distribute the film theatrically in the U.S.
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