All of a Sudden

Marie-Lou Fontaine would like to see a different approach to caring for the residents – most of whom have dementia – at the Paris care home she manages. She wants to introduce the Humanitude method, which enables residents and their families to have a deeper, more human connection with the care staff. However, this ambition meets with resistance from her staff, who argue that there are insufficient resources for such an initiative. All this resistance threatens to push Marie-Lou to the brink of burnout, but then she meets Mari Morisaki, a Japanese artist with terminal cancer. The two hit it off immediately and find they have a great deal in common in their views on illness and death.

Pursuing an ideal is admirable but also difficult, as the (economic) realities of everyday life often stand in the way of such ideals. In his new film, Japanese director Ryūsuke Hamaguchi (known for, amongst others, Drive My Car) illustrates what this means in practice through the intense friendship between two women for whom death is a significant part of their lives.