Steps away from where several couples are enjoying an evening out dancing by the river in Paris, two women have a heart-to-heart, perhaps more typical of people who’ve known each other for a long time. One of them, Mari (Tao Okamoto), a Japanese theater director, divulges her cancer diagnosis, while her interlocutor, Marie-Lou (Virginie Efira), a French woman in charge of a nursing home, listens attentively. Over the course of that evening, their first one getting to know one another, and in the days to come, they will continue to discover the other’s apprehensions, virtues, and weaknesses with mutual compassion.

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As it unhurriedly unfolds, perhaps counterintuitively to its title, “All of a Sudden,” Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s follow-up to the bleakly enigmatic “Evil Does Not Exist” reveals itself as a life-affirming miracle of a movie. Without fear of stepping into hyperbole, it’s the kind of assured artistic flex that earns its vast runtime and the many thematic tangents it takes because it all convenes so delicately and stirringly in the end. By then, spending time with these characters becomes a heart-healing balm. Instead of an “out-of-body” experience, “All of a Sudden” squarely resonates like the opposite, an in-body epiphany, if you will.

Hamaguchi’s dialogue-rich drama takes inspiration from Makiko Miyano and Maho Isono’s 2019 nonfiction tome “You and I – The Illness Suddenly Gets Worse,” and traverses many subjects through the hands of its two remarkably tenderhearted leads. The source material comprises correspondence between a philosopher, Miyano, and a medical anthropologist, Isono. But before Marie-Lou and Mari’s paths intersect, the former finds herself at an impasse in implementing Humanitude, a care approach that prioritizes the agency and mobility of elderly patients with cognitive illnesses, at Garden of Freedom, the nursing home she runs. Pushing against it because of concerns about the risks of allowing residents to move freely is Sophie (Marie Bunel), a seasoned nurse set in her ways.

Instead of delving into bureaucratic humdrum, Hamaguchi and co-screenwriter Léa Le Dimna offer a fittingly humanist examination of the relationships between the staff, the patients, and their families. Throughout the narrative, a recurring activity at the Garden of Freedom involves welcoming the relatives of one of the elderly residents to tell their loved one’s story. These tributes honor the person with a condition that has robbed them of much of their personality, without portraying them as saints. An early one includes a son who cries because he will no longer have an opportunity to confront his frail father, whose memory is gone, and he must deal with the relationship in new terms. Hamaguchi brings back this son’s character near the end for a brief but devastatingly beautiful moment.

“Who are those who are truly alive?” exclaims Gorô Kiyomiya (Kyōzō Nagatsuka), the sole actor in Mari’s modest stage production “Up Close No One Is Normal,” in turn inspired by the work of Italian psychiatrist Franco Basaglia. The one-man play is the reason she has returned to France, where she studied as a younger woman. The first time Hamaguchi treats us to Gorô’s monologue, which questions whether those we consider insane might have a more direct line to something divine and intangible that our thoughts prevent us from reaching, the most important audience member is Tomoki (Kodai Kurosaki), Gorô’s grandson, who has severe autism. When Gorô reappears in a different context, the speech about the inalienable qualities each person carries, even when their mind seems distant, gains greater significance. The words pulsate like a grounding mantra, urging you to exist in the present. Acting, as seen in the Oscar-winning “Drive My Car,” is a recurrent trope in Hamaguchi’s storytelling.

Marie-Lou attends that initial performance, sparking a seemingly boundless conversation with Mari for the larger portion of “All of a Sudden.” Two women talking, in both French and Japanese, since they both speak the other’s mother tongue, about everything from cerebral queries to Studio Ghibli, embark on what resembles a platonic and perhaps even more introspective iteration of the chats at the center of the films in Richard Linklater’s “Before” trilogy. With no shots of the Eiffel Tower in sight, Mari and Marie-Lou walk around the city, only to eventually arrive at the Garden of Freedom, where their rendezvous turns into a literal lesson on capitalism and how it devours our time as raw material for its voracious pursuits. Yet, even as Mari literally uses a whiteboard to share her thoughts, there are instances at this location where the two new friends raise the level of emotional intimacy between them with a long, heartfelt embrace or by playing with finger puppets.

The alchemy comes in large part from Okamoto and Efira, whose sublime turns go beyond a lived-in connection to their parts. One has no doubt they are who they are playing; they’ve dissolved into their characters. The entirety of their friendship unfolds over the course of a month. That Hamaguchi specifies only a few days have passed between time jumps—by noting the exact dates on the screen as if his film were a diary—is relevant not only because it prevents the viewer from thinking long stretches have passed, but also because it reaffirms the notion that a change in one’s outlook on the world can, in fact, occur over a short term, and does not always require a long gestation, but rather the right catalyst.

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And that’s what Mari and Marie-Lou are to each other: a fork in the road, or a turning point incarnate. If Marie-Lou shows Mari that even as her illness progresses, she has the power to decide how to spend her time, Mari helps Marie-Lou and those around her reconnect with something pure about their bodies. Thinking is supplanted by touching under Mari’s watch. Though her body is failing her, she is still using it to feel—right till the very end.

The over-three-hours Hamaguchi asks of us allows for the bond between Mari and Marie-Lou to evolve with exquisite restraint, even if the time they share, in the grand scheme of their lives, is minuscule. When the overwhelmingly moving last chapter lands, after we have been convinced that this life, despite its horrors, offers plenty of luminous gifts, Mari’s last line might turn you into a puddle of bittersweet tears. And even as emotions may overcome the viewer, Hamaguchi never pushes “All of a Sudden” into saccharine terrain for empty positivity or cheap inspirational aims. It all feels earned. The result is a treasure, a transcendent film whose power is capable of rekindling one’s hope in humanity. It’s an invitation for those in the grasp of despair to maybe stay a little longer among the living. [A]

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