SOUDAIN (ALL OF A SUDDEN)
The making of… Soudain (All of a Sudden) by Ryusuke Hamaguchi
Making his third appearance In Competition, following on from Netemo sametemo (Asako I and II) and the unforgettable Doraibu mai kā (Drive My Car), which won the Award for Best Screenplay in 2021, Japanese filmmaker Ryusuke Hamaguchi is back with the intertwined stories of two women. One is French and runs a care facility for the elderly, while the other is a Japanese theatre director battling cancer. Soudain (All of a Sudden) is a loose adaptation for the cinema of Kyū ni guai ga waruku naru (When Life Suddenly Takes a Turn: Twenty Letters Between a Philosopher with Terminal Cancer and Medical Anthropologist), a documentary book co-written by Maoko Miyano and Maho Isono.
Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s new feature film is a German-Belgian-French co-production, which, for the first time, has been partly shot in France and stars the Belgian actress Virginie Efira. Soudain (All of a Sudden) is essentially about her friendship with Japanese actress Tao Okamoto, and was adapted from the poignant pen-friendship between Maoko Miyano, a philosopher suffering from terminal breast cancer, and the anthropologist Maho Isono.
Hamaguchi transposes this relationship to a care facility for the elderly in the Paris suburbs, where the film crew actually lived during shooting and mingled with the residents.
“Since we filmed there for such a long time, many of the residents and staff members ended up participating in the film. […] Filming was a kind of entertainment for many of the residents; some appeared as extras, while others watched from their windows.” — Ryusuke Hamaguchi
Immersed in this authentic atmosphere, as Virginie Efira herself describes it, her character, Marie-Lou, attempts to introduce a philosophy of care for the elderly known as “Humanitude,” a philosophical and age-related concept based on empathy. As the film progresses, this theme extends to her playwright friend’s end-of-life journey, particularly through the director’s choice of a drawn-out narrative structure and extended scenes of dialogue.
“ I don’t feel like the camera filmed what I was playing or what I was seeking to express, but rather what I was experiencing. ” Virginie Efira
For the filmmaker, this is largely because of the work of Alan Guichaoua, the film’s director of photography, who is best known for his work on Guillaume Brac’s films.
