All of a Sudden

A drama set in Paris. Marie-Lou is the newly appointed director of a home for the elderly. She is trying to bring a particular approach to care into the institution: looking at the person while you care for them, telling them before you touch them, not doing things in a hurry. The habits of the place do not fit that. A Japanese theatre director arrives at the home. She has been treated for cancer and it has advanced; she will spend the time she has left here. The film is built from the conversations of two women. The subject is care, death, and whether a person can still make their own decisions in their last months. What the narrative is interested in is the gap between institutional order and personal attention: the staff is short, there is no time, and the method Marie-Lou defends is tested every day in practice. The source is not fiction; it is freely adapted from a documentary book written by Maoko Miyano and Maho Isono. It was shot in a real care facility in the Paris suburbs. Virginie Efira plays Marie-Lou and Tao Okamoto plays the Japanese director. The two shared the acting prize at the Cannes Film Festival. It runs over three hours and fills that with talk. Ryusuke Hamaguchi directed; it is his first feature made outside Japan and the film is largely in French. Who it is for: anyone who likes cinema built on long conversation scenes, and Hamaguchi's earlier work. Who it is not for: anyone the subject would be hard on; the film shows death and care directly and does not soften them.