All of a Sudden

From Viennale

Hamaguchi Ryusuke makes a satisfying relocation to Paris with this slow-burning study of radical empathy and mutual caregiving, coming to focus almost exclusively on the friendship between two women: French nursing-home director Marie-Lou (Virginie Efira) and Japanese theatre director Mari (Okamoto Tao), who is living with terminal cancer. They meet as Mari is putting on a show in Paris, while Marie-Lou—who speaks Japanese—is introducing a care technique known as Humanitude at the nursing home in the face of considerable resistance. SOUDAIN fits into the female-centric branch of Hamaguchi’s cinema, reminiscent of WHEEL OF FORTUNE AND FANTASY (2021) and HAPPY HOUR (2015) in particular, and not only because of its extended runtime. Based on letters of correspondence between two Japanese women, a philosopher dying of cancer and a medical anthropologist, SOUDAIN is very much a film of talking and listening. Hamaguchi’s films have always been dialogue-heavy, but SOUDAIN takes it to the extreme: for his female characters, conversation is the crucial vehicle for personal subjectivity, for allowing these women to understand themselves, each other and, in a crucial scene, the sociopolitical forces that underlie all of our interactions. (Mark Peranson)