'All of a Sudden' Review
Release Date: 11/25/26 [Cinemas]
Genre: Drama.
MPAA: Rated PG13.
Distributor: NEON.
The Verdict: A Must-See
One of the biggest surprises in recent Oscar memory was Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s Drive My Car breaking into the Best Picture race. The 2021 Japanese drama was more than worthy of its nomination, and maybe it became an undeniable film, but that is the kind of movie that requires a ton of buy-in from its audience. Counting his newest, the 3+ hour French/Japanese opus All of a Sudden, the three Hamaguchi movies I’ve seen have used their depth to their advantage, rewarding engaged audiences with a feeling most filmmakers can't replicate. He makes movies that feel uniquely human and natural, and All of a Sudden adds to his impressive filmography.
Like Drive My Car, All of a Sudden pairs its epic length with modest ambitions. The film takes place over a summer in Paris, mostly over a week and a half. As the title suggests, the film’s story and the relationships between characters develop suddenly, yet a lot is learned and gained in that short time. At the beginning of the film, Marie-Lou Fontaine (Virginie Efra) and Mari Morisaki (Tao Okamoto) are strangers. Marie-Lou is the director of Garden of Freedom, an assisted living care facility for older adults dealing with severe cognitive impairment. The first 30-40 minutes of All of a Sudden establish the facility's ecosystem: the meetings they hold, the activities they offer, and the memorial events coordinated to remember their residents' decorated pasts.
There are fractions within the ranks, with the issue of Marie-Lou’s preferred method of care, a hands-on and intimate practice called "Humanitude," causing divides in the staff. The younger caretakers have bought into the method, which involves a lot of eye contact, touching, and descriptive explanations of what the caretaker is doing for the resident. The longtime practitioners are more skeptical, believing that the extra training necessary to learn the pillars of the practice isn’t worth the extra effort. Among All of a Sudden’s many ideas is questions about the blurring of professional and personal compassion, and what is most appropriate and safest.
Marie-Lou is a dedicated leader, almost too dedicated, having eradicated any personal time from her life in favor of the job. She spends most of her time on Zoom calls with her budget-stingy superiors, aggressively asking them to fund her ambitions and pay her staff more money. This relentless work ethic leaves her vulnerable to burnout, which her longtime professional partner Olivier (Jean-Charles Clichet) identifies after one particularly public moment of frustration. He practically forces her to take a day off, which turns out to be the most fortuitous vacation day that she’s ever taken.
Early in the film, Marie-Lou finds autistic teen Tomoki (Kodai Kurosaki) alone, and her care training compels her to stay with him until his grandfather Gorô (Kyōzō Nagatsuka) and Mari arrive. Marie-Lou and Mari quickly connect, and Marie-Lou uses her day off to check out Mari’s play. In this one-person show, Gorô plays a psychiatrist who became infamous for banning mental hospitals in Italy. As perplexing and experimental as the art may be, Marie-Lou is very moved by the performance.
Much of the movie focuses on the relationship between these two women, as their conversations and philosophical debates fill pages and pages of the script. Marie-Lou is fascinated by Mari’s life-affirming spirit, made even more compelling by her stage 4 cancer diagnosis. The two chat for hours, first on a stroll through the streets of Paris, then through an uneventful night shift at Garden of Freedom. Real chemistry and real attraction exist between them, though it is left fairly ambiguous whether it's romantic. They are drawn to what the other represents, and their conversations radiate with the kind of life-pondering that permanently changes the other person’s perspective. These conversations are so big, literally trying to fix the problems of the world, that there’s no time for personal details. In fact, it becomes a running joke between the two that they don’t actually know anything about each other.
All of a Sudden builds whatever tension exists in this narrative through nonevents. The biggest direct conflict, beyond the cancer and the burdens of systematic underfunding that we’ve already discussed, is an ideological disagreement between Marie-Lou and career caretaker Sophie (Marie Bunel). The movie makes its bacon in these extended intellectual debates and prolonged extensions of empathy. This will test many general audiences, especially given the film's length. Much like Drive My Car, the full scope of Hamaguchi’s brilliance requires patience.
Admittedly, some of this intellectualism was too academic even for my very tested taste. There are multiple sequences where Marie-Lou and Mari quite literally debate the meaning of care and capitalism by drawing out their metaphors on a whiteboard. Much of the dialogue is extremely rich, but it can be a little taxing to sit through. If you can find a way to stick through the more testing parts of the pacing, Hamaguchi rewards you with a stunning climax, the kind of scene that is impossible to explain outside of the context of the film but works so well when you’ve spent three hours building towards it. The film’s last note leaves you completely speechless with its beauty.
The film's impact falls as much on Hamaguchi’s two lead actresses as it does on him. The way that Efra and Okamoto weave in and out of French and Japanese is just marvelous, but these are not just technical acting achievements. These are two incredible performances that convey so much through a mixture of looks and lecture. They turn simple acts like foot massages and shared cigarettes into something beautiful. Clearly, a lot of rehearsal and preparation went into the process, but in the end, their dynamic fits the natural feel of their director’s guidance.
It is quite an achievement that All of a Sudden remains as consistently affecting and riveting as it does, given its length. Hamaguchi’s filmmaking is often blunt, and it sometimes can be a bit on-the-nose, but it is never anything less than thoroughly thought-provoking. Fittingly adapted from a real-life relationship, this is a story with chapters upon chapters and scenes upon scenes worth reflecting on. This may look like homework for cinephiles, but it is the kind of homework that makes you a better movie watcher.
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