ALL OF A SUDDEN Luminaries

Academy Award®-winning Japanese auteur Ryûsuke Hamaguchi (DRIVE MY CAR, AFI FEST 2021) decamps to France for this life-affirming tale about the resilience and patience required to truly care for another human being. Co-winners of the Best Actress Award at Cannes, Virginie Efira and Tao Okamoto star as a pair of unlikely friends, who, after a spontaneous encounter, quickly develop a deep and abiding intimacy. Marie-Lou Fontaine (Efira) is the director of a nursing home in the Parisian suburbs and a devotee of an approach of caring for others, especially those with Alzheimer’s and dementia, called Humanitude. The technique requires continuous patience and presence and risks the dangers of a more dynamic care unit. In Paris, Marie-Lou attends a play staged by experimental theater director Mari Morisaki (Okamoto) and sees much of her work reflected in the performance. She strikes up an easy friendship with Mari as the puzzle pieces of their interests, backgrounds and even spoken languages (French and Japanese) slide frictionlessly into place. Soon, Mari is helping Marie-Lou on her mission to re-imagine elder care from a kinder, gentler place, resistant to the pressures to make the work fast and efficient and the patients docile and compliant. The humanist approach of his protagonists informs Hamaguchi’s filmmaking. Motivated by unhurried curiosity, Hamaguchi gives his characters room to breathe and be. He offers that same consideration to his viewers: the film is warm, inviting, easy on the eyes, soothing to the mind. It welcomes viewers to nestle in and feel nourished — to be unbothered, if only for a moment, by the rush of expectations waiting outside the film’s serene embrace. –Travis Weedon