It would be folly for me to pretend that Ryusuke Hamaguchi is not one of my favorite filmmakers, Japanese or otherwise. Between the tender Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy, the Oscar-winning Drive My Car (still a contender for one of my favorite films of the decade, and easily the best Haruki Murakami adaptation to date), and the existential eco-fable Evil Does Not Exist, the 47-year-old filmmaker comes the closest I’ve seen to approaching the “cinema of the real” with a patient approach that escapes the confines of the arthouse and has something approaching broad-based appeal. Being able to do that without the genre-lean of Kiyoshi Kurosawa or the saccharine sweetness of Hirokazu Kore-eda is remarkable. Hamaguchi crafts intimate stories told within epic runtimes that often cover a litany of topics before the end credits roll, and reckons with his Herculean task without the minutes ever flagging for the viewer. It’s incredible to behold when taken in context.
That said, his latest, All of a Sudden, may be the film where he has the most to say to the captive eyes that are prepared to receive it. In his first effort outside of his mother tongue, All of a Sudden sets sail in France where Marie-Lou (Virginie Efira, also the star of the deeply underrated Paul Verhoeven film Benedetta) manages a care home for the elderly and infirm that focuses on a rehabilitation plan called “Humanitude.” In a nutshell, it’s your basic idea that instead of residents remaining bed-bound, they are given the opportunity to have feet on the ground and move with some level of guided independence. It’s controversial, even among its long-time nursing staff, for whom Marie-Lou is a new supervisor. On top of that, the managerial pressures from her own supervisors regarding the budget and the need to turn a greater profit are flying in the face of the more holistic approach the facility is trying to get off the ground as a standard of care.
On a particularly challenging day, Marie-Lou happens to cross paths with Tomoki, a teenage boy with autism (Kodai Kurosaki) who is wandering alone. After staying with him in the park to ensure his safety, they’re joined by Goro, the boy’s grandfather (Kyozo Nagatsuka), and theater director Mari (Tao Okamoto), who had been searching high and low for him. As a way of thanks, Mari invites Marie-Lou to attend their staging of an Italian play starring Goro as the sole actor, and from there it kicks off a friendship between these two women with similar names that travels vast distances and emotional terrain.
For a stretch of time, there’s a stark similarity to Richard Linklater’s “Before trilogy” as the two lead figures in question take control of the film in the wake of the play as a sort of two-hander. They converse with one another both in French and then in Japanese, and then back again, until the film settles into a rhythm of their both being able to communicate to one another using their primary languages individually. This is an impressive feat of performance, but more so it’s the relationship that’s built between them that acts as the heart of what Hamaguchi is most concerned with…until, of course, he expands the film’s interests far further. In a lesser filmmaker’s hands, one would not be able to resist the potential for romantic longing between these two single women, one of whom in particular has limited time left to her. And not that such a pairing would ever be unwelcome, but a deeper exploration of non-sexualized love between two women running headfirst into middle-age feels like territory that’s gone long unexplored, and here Hamaguchi, Efira and Okamoto take the full journey between their initial meeting as they walk the French waterway into their final beautiful moments bedside. Taken on its own, it’s a staggering portrait of friendship and how this kind of companionship enriches us, if we only took the time.
But wait, that’s not all. If it was just a weepy film about two lonely ladies, Hamaguchi would have produced a pleasant film, remarkable on its own merits but one that wouldn’t necessarily resonate. Been there, done that. But there’s a moment, deep in their bilingual conversation, when Mari pulls out a whiteboard and begins to discuss her theory of capitalism (playing off a Marxist remark that Marie-Lou mentions earlier, to be clear) and then…yes, all of a sudden, we realize that Hamaguchi wants to do far more with this movie than just portray this moment in the lives of his two weary protagonists. As their relationship deepens, the canvas of this world expands into the day to day of the care center, its residents and a few of the key nursing staff that provide counterpoints to some of the ethos of the “Humanitude” philosophy.
As we move from moment to moment, a tapestry is woven by the filmmaker that encompasses aspects as broad-ranging as the aforementioned cultural clash of late-stage capitalism, how stage movement of actors can dovetail with physical rehabilitation, the state of end-of-life care, and — this is particularly core to the end tenet of the film — how the human touch can have its own salving effect for those who need it most. These ideas come upon us, slipping over the audience like silk sheets, and at no point do any of these premises conflict or feel unartful; instead they take the form of a beautiful fully-formed whole that is part and parcel with the lived-in world that Hamaguchi so skillfully renders.
If there is one possible misstep, it may come at the expense of his taking his final statement too far into a kind of universalist text. There’s a bit of messaging, voiced by Goro in his play (performed twice in this film), that posits that the closure of mental health institutions (as run by the state) was a net positive for society. No argument here, necessarily — but where that philosophy gets thorny, as outwardly stated by Goro within the play (and displayed as text within the film itself), is the claim that even if a man with mental illness were to go home one day and slaughter his own mother, that is a risk worth taking to ensure that we all can live together in one greater community with no one being shelved away within the confinement of institutionalization. This is the rare time that Hamaguchi oversteps, as his argument does not really hold up to scrutiny. Putting aside the idea — and it’s a big aside — that elder care and mental health are not directly comparable, nor do they have the same plan of action, it’s hard to agree with the idea that the potential safety of an individual undergoing great distress, or those within their direct radius, can be sacrificed for some greater, loftier goal. Perhaps in Japan, this kind of idea has greater applicability where institutionalization is incredibly high. But the gap between that vision and reality is its own story – the Community Mental Health Act of 1963 promised community-based care that never fully arrived, and the stalemate since the Olmstead decision hasn’t closed it. That’s not a hypothetical; it’s what happens when the safety net you replace an institution with never gets built. I wish he was right, but it’s the only time I’ve ever felt him do something that I’d call “Pollyannish.”
Still, isolating that qualm, this is still an enriching film, one well worth experiencing, and the conversations it has prompted between myself and my partner have fueled the past few days even as we began to exit our time in Toronto and the film festival. Hamaguchi is one of our best living filmmakers, and to miss this would be to do yourself a disservice.