Review: ‘All of a Sudden‘ might undo you

You never really know what the Internet is doing to your brain until you sit down and watch a film like Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s All of a Sudden.

Clocking in at 196 minutes, the film opens amid the workaday woes of an assisted-living facility run by the firm yet introspective Marie-Lou (Virginie Efira). Tasked with introducing a more human-centered approach to care known as Humanitude, Marie-Lou struggles to win over her staff. Seeking a brief reprieve from work, she takes a few days off, during which she meets Mari (Tao Okamoto), perhaps the friendliest face ever to grace the screen.

A playwright and theater director, Mari invites Marie-Lou to one of her productions—an invitation that will quietly alter the course of both their lives. It’s only after the curtain falls that we learn Mari is not merely a gifted storyteller, but a terminally ill cancer patient. What follows is a film of extraordinary tenderness, unfolding through long, searching conversations about mortality, compassion, and the peculiar business of being human. At its heart is a friendship so beautifully observed, so delicate and deeply felt, that by the time the credits roll, you may find yourself feeling as though the slightest act of kindness might undo you.

At times, its philosophical musings drift into TED Talk territory, but it’s in the quieter moments—wiping bird shit from each other’s faces, massaging tired calves, taking turns pushing a wheelchair—that the film finds its greatest beauty. These small, tactile gestures reveal something that all the philosophizing in the world cannot: the extraordinary intimacy of caring for another person.

All of a Sudden is, in many ways, the anti-algorithm: slow, tender, forgiving. It wants nothing from you other than the chance to sit with its characters, listen to their conversations, and share in their humanity. In a world increasingly obsessed with efficiency, immediacy, and distraction, here is a film that asks us to surrender our attention, embrace the seemingly inconsequential, and find meaning in the simple act of being alive. Better yet, in sharing that life with someone else.