{"id":484377,"date":"2026-05-14T13:58:12","date_gmt":"2026-05-14T13:58:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/484377\/"},"modified":"2026-05-14T13:58:12","modified_gmt":"2026-05-14T13:58:12","slug":"all-of-a-sudden-confronts-life-death-and-the-failures-of-capitalism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/484377\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018All of a Sudden\u2019 Confronts Life, Death and the Failures of Capitalism"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tWhen Tao Okamoto first read the script for Ryusuke Hamaguchi<\/a>\u2019s\u00a0All of a Sudden, one scene told her above all others that this was hers for the taking. The sequence saw her character, a well-regarded playwright named Mari, explaining the systemic failures of modern capitalism. The monologue is long and complex, propelled by interconnecting arguments that, on the surface, might resemble an academic paper; it\u2019s complete with her drawing whiteboard graphics to illustrate and summarize her points.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThis is something that I\u2019d been thinking about over the years \u2014 and I got to lecture people on it in the movie, it\u2019s amazing,\u201d Okamoto says. \u201cI think it will help a lot of people to connect the dots. I don\u2019t think I\u2019ve ever seen any movie explain and verbalize the system of capitalism and where we are like this.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tOf course,\u00a0All of a Sudden\u00a0is not an academic paper. Hamaguchi\u2019s film feels about as far from that as you can get, in fact, playing as a richly textured and emotionally vast tapestry of human connection. But it\u2019s no small detail that one of the screenplay\u2019s most outwardly intellectual portions is where Okamoto felt most artistically inspired. This is a movie overflowing with big ideas, determined to imbue them into its intimate, character-driven story.<\/p>\n

\n\tHamaguchi tends to operate this way, most notably with\u00a0Drive My Car<\/a>, a three-plus-hour epic that won the 2022 Oscar for best international<\/a> feature and received nominations for best picture, director and adapted screenplay \u2014 the only movie to do so in Japanese cinema history. His most recent drama,\u00a0Evil Does Not Exist, examined the natural world as besieged by modern industry. With\u00a0All of a Sudden, which like\u00a0Drive My Car\u00a0also runs more than three hours and will premiere at the Cannes<\/a> Film Festival, he turns his attention to caretaking. Loosely adapted from the book\u00a0You and I \u2014 The Illness Suddenly Get Worse\u00a0(L\u00e9a Le Dimna co-wrote the screenplay with Hamaguchi), the film traces the deepening bond between Okamoto\u2019s Mari, who is dying of cancer while staging a new production just off the Seine River, and Marie-Lou (Virginie Efira<\/a>), the director of a nearby nursing home in Paris.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tIt\u2019s an instant meeting of the souls. The two strangers first encounter each other in a park, where Mari invites Marie-Lou to see her show. Marie-Lou attends, finds herself extremely affected, and stays behind to chat with the writer about it \u2014 a bravura getting-to-know-you setpiece that becomes the first of many lengthy conversation scenes wherein Marie-Lou speaks in French and Mari in Japanese (except when they occasionally switch, meaning yes, each is fluent in both). Over just a few days, the deeper they dig, the more they come to rely on each other. This kind of mutual caretaking, physical as well as emotional, prods larger conversations about the state of the world \u2014 particularly, Marie-Lou\u2019s nursing home facing a perpetual funding crisis.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI was very sensitive to how intellectual the film was because the way of looking at things through otherness and this philosophical lens can broaden our horizons,\u201d says Efira. \u201cWe shot in a working nursing home with real residents, and it was all about these bodies who are not functional anymore for capitalism. Then, Hamaguchi\u2019s dialogue is extremely powerful to the point that it can combine the intimate and the political.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tEfira and Kodai Kurosaki in All of a Sudden.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCannes Film Festival<\/p>\n

\n\tThe two stars came into\u00a0All of a Sudden\u00a0willing, even eager to completely surrender to the material, and that commitment shows in their finely tuned and vulnerable performances. Hamaguchi cast them with interest in their past individual work with noted directors: He quizzed Efira about her collaborations with Paul Verhoeven (Elle,\u00a0Benedetta) and gushed to Okamoto about acting for James Mangold in, of all things,\u00a0Wolverine. \u201cI wouldn\u2019t think he would be watching that type of movie,\u201d Okamoto says with a laugh, \u201cbut he remembered me from that time, 13 years ago.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThat\u00a0X-Men\u00a0installment actually served as Okamoto\u2019s film debut, following a successful modeling career that brought her to New York, and the Japanese native went on to star in other studio-driven Hollywood projects like\u00a0Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice\u00a0and\u00a0The Man in the High Castle. In 2023, she moved back to Japan to refocus her career away from blockbusters, and toward auteur-driven cinema. Then Hamaguchi came calling. Okamoto pretended she knew French, since that was required of the role, before actually gaining some command of the language after her casting. She had 12 months of prep all told, immersing herself in various facilities like a cancer research center while chewing on the many layers of the dense script.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tEfira, a C\u00e9sar Award winner, came in later, first meeting Hamaguchi at the Place de la Bastille in Paris. \u201cHe has this attentiveness, this curiosity, and that puts you in sort of a trance,\u201d she says. \u201cAfter we met, I was left there almost like I was drunk.\u201d Like Okamoto, she felt a profound kinship with her character\u2019s story, explaining, \u201cIt had a spiritual power to it, and it felt like I couldn\u2019t let this script get away from me.\u201d She didn\u2019t know any Japanese, so started with the basics, but was astounded by how Hamaguchi facilitated such thorough preparation for his actors. For instance: \u201cHe wrote entire scenes that were not in the script, that we [acted out], just to inform the characters by creating memories for them. All this was in prep.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBoth admit to a learning curve to Hamaguchi\u2019s methods. It\u2019d take two days to complete a given conversation scene, which could run for 20 minutes or more. He\u2019d begin with one tracking shot, then break it down into smaller sections, then return to a master \u2014 and then rehearse what the next day would look like. \u201cIf something goes wrong or you misunderstand or misreact at the 12th minute, we just start all over,\u201d Efira says, noting they had to be exact with the script\u2019s words but were totally free in how they interpreted the dialogue.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tOkamoto felt the pressure of stepping into a very different style of filmmaking. \u201cI have been complimented before on how I can be aware of where the light is coming from, where the camera is without looking at it, how I\u2019m being captured \u2014 I thought that was my strength,\u201d she says. \u201cBut he told me the first week, \u2018Can you just forget that you\u2019re acting?\u2019 It was quite a challenge for me to cancel all these systems within myself.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tOkamoto and Efira developed a friendship over the two-month shoot that mirrored the dynamic between Marie-Lou and Mari. \u201cEven though Virginie seems very confident and experienced, she was very nervous \u2014 it was so cute, she made me touch her heart, and it was beating like crazy,\u201d Okamoto says of one of their earliest days on set. \u201cShe was also a real caretaker, on and off set.\u201d Efira adds, \u201cIt turns out the best summer of my life was in a nursing home, which I never expected. We all say that it changed our lives and I\u2019ve never had this on any other set \u2014 and that\u2019s not a promo line.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIndeed not \u2014 Okamoto takes that sentiment a step further: \u201cIt changed my life completely. I was scared of death as a child \u2014 it was one of my biggest fears, and something that I learned how to avoid thinking about growing up \u2014 and I had to face it again.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tRyusuke Hamaguchi with the 2022 Oscar for best international feature, for his film Drive My Car.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tEmma McIntyre\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

\n\tWhile still politically uncompromising and laced with cutting wit,\u00a0All of a Sudden\u00a0is a remarkably open-hearted work, confronting seemingly intractable systems with a simple belief in people. Hamaguchi holds tight to that conviction from beginning to end.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe result of the movie is just him being himself, as a human being,\u201d Okamoto says. \u201cAnd that\u2019s beautiful. If someone doesn\u2019t know who Hamaguchi-san is, it\u2019s all there. That\u2019s him.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tEfira puts it this way: \u201cIt\u2019s so difficult to make a movie about kindness.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tAs for that rather significant runtime? Hamaguchi regulars shouldn\u2019t be deterred, but Efira argues that, true to\u00a0All of a Sudden\u2019s spirit, all should walk in with their hearts and minds open. \u201cIt\u2019s always best to see a good film that\u2019s three hours long, rather than a bad film that\u2019s an hour and 20 minutes,\u201d she says with a smile. \u201cHamaguchi has this sense of detail. He doesn\u2019t take you by the hand and tell you what to think. He really takes his time, and I think our society needs that time \u2014 we don\u2019t have it, but we need it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t***<\/p>\n

\n\tAll of a Sudden premieres May 15 at the\u00a0Cannes Film Festival<\/a>. Stay tuned for more Cannes 2026<\/a> first looks and exclusives.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When Tao Okamoto first read the script for Ryusuke Hamaguchi\u2019s\u00a0All of a Sudden, one scene told her above…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":484378,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[263],"tags":[10404,190863,11519,211828,18,117,19,1452,17,327,7674,211829,211830],"class_list":["post-484377","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-cannes","tag-cannes-2026","tag-cannes-film-festival","tag-drive-my-car","tag-eire","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-international","tag-ireland","tag-movies","tag-neon","tag-ryusuke-hamaguchi","tag-virginie-efira"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/484377","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=484377"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/484377\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/484378"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=484377"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=484377"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=484377"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}