Ryusuke Hamaguchi's novelistic style tries patience in this well-meaning, but too-earnest-for-its-own-good tale of happenstance and compassion. Clocking at 3 hours and 16 minutes, All of a Sudden marks Hamaguchi's first production outside Japan, in collaboration with French actress Virginie Efira, set in Paris.
As a retirement home director, Marie-Lou (Efira), is walking a fine line between maintaining the morale of the overworked staff and pressure from the management to get the profits up. Her new initiative called, Humanintude (!)- a care practice based on respectful and humanistic treatment of patients who are suffering from terminal illness, alzheimers and other illnesses associated with old age. For seasoned nurses, her technique is not practical in real life - it takes too much time in a fast paced environment where turn around and refilling the beds with new arrivals are critical. Long hours and constant battles with everyone is taking a toll on Marie-Lou.
One day on her way home on a tram, she sees a Japanese boy lost in the streets. She jumps off the tram, follows the boy to a hillside of a park. The boy is obviously on the spectrum with twitches and non-verbal and all that. So she decides stay with him and wait for the caretaker to show up. It is revealed that the boy is Tomoki, the grandson of a stage actor who is performing a play in Paris. She also meets the director of the play, Mari (Tao Okamoto) who invites her to the play. They converse in Japanese since Marie-Lou speaks Japanese fluently. Marie-Lou takes the chance to see the play, which is about Italian psychiatrist Bataglia who is responsible for abolishing mental asylum. Deeply moved by the play which relates very much to her profession, Marie-Lou and Mari strike up an instant friendship.
They converse in Japanese, English and French fluently whenever needed, and discuss the effects of capitalism at length, and the state of the care for the elderly and invalids. We find out they are well educated (Marie-Lou studied at Waseda Univ., and Mari at Sorbonne) and well versed in economics and philosophy. At this point if you are not nausiated by all the elitism of this movie, you can go on reading.
Mari tells Marie-Lou that she has an incurable cancer and the doctors told her her conditions can rapidly deteriorate all of a sudden and that will be it for her. So All of a Sudden is not only a cringe inducing elitist bullshit, it's also a terminal disease tearjerker movie. Oh boy!
They bond through long walks/conversations by the Seine until dawn, Marie-Lou accompanies Mari to Kyoto where her home is, and makes her to come back to Paris to be an artist in residence at her retirement home, where she will be cared for until her death. There will be therapeutic lessons in healing through touching and massaging each others' feet, there will be tearful confessions and encouragement interview sessions with hardened nurses and newbies and patients and their families, there will be the pigeon poop falling on their faces fraternity and there will be a lot of smiling and crying.
For some reason, the novelistic approach of Drive My Car (with just as long running time) worked for me. Maybe it was partly based on Haruki Murakami story? But All of a Sudden goes on waaaay too long. With long drawn out conclusions and an epilogue, it reminded me of Lord of the Rings multiple ending within the last 40 minutes where it could've ended at any point. It's not a good sign where you wonder, 'she's not dead yet?' everytime there is a scene change. All of a Sudden is way too earnest, way too cringy and definitely doesn't justify its running time. Hamaguchi desparately needs a script editor.
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