Confession: I’m a big fan of any movie where a character grabs an eraser and starts drawing to illustrate a novel theory about how capitalism, democracy, and the natural world interact.
That remarkable—and surprising, as Cannes has offered us so far—occurs in about an hour and 45 minutes “Suddenly,” the return of Japanese director Ryusuke Hamaguchi to the competition after “Drive My Car” in 2021. Are all 196 minutes of the film necessary? Yes and no: Another way to understand the worldview of the film is that every minute we actually spend talking to another person is important.
This is a film that takes time to understand two people deeply, and to watch them take time to understand each other. Marie-Lou (Virginie Efira) is the director of a nursing home; Mari (Tao Okamoto) is an experimental theater director. They meet by chance in Paris, and Mari invites Marie-Lou to a play she is playing. Perhaps, each of them is fluent in the other’s native language. It turns out that Marie-Lou studied anthropology at Wakeda University in Japan, and Mari studied philosophy at the Sorbonne. (The stars, meanwhile, apparently had to learn Japanese and French for their roles. Expect both to be front-runners for the festival’s best actor award.)
Women named in the same way also have basic modesty and generosity. At work, Marie-Lou tries to introduce a patient-centered approach to care, Ubuntu, and faces resistance. Training is necessary and—as Marie-Lou explains in almost as much detail as Mari uses in her capitalism-vs.-nature paintings—this method will not reap its full benefits unless all workers participate.
Mari, on the other hand, has, until now, been secretive about the news that she is suffering from Stage 4 cancer. (The title refers to how soon her final, fatal blow could come.) Her play, “Up Close, No One Is Normal,” directed by her creative partner, Goro (Kyozo Nagatsuka), is about a psychiatrist named Franco Basaglia (1924-1980), who pushed to end hospices. mentally as they were in Italy. Instead, he favored a less expensive, community-based approach.
Marie-Lou’s experience as a caregiver and Mari’s artistic ability make them an unlikely team. Mari visits Marie-Lou’s workplace; Marie-Lou goes to take care of Mari in Kyoto. The film’s plea for attentive listening and attention is admittedly strange, even woo-woo, and the narrative could have benefited from a thorn. There were times when I wondered if Hamaguchi was presenting a rosier picture of end-of-life care—from the perspective of both patients and medical professionals—than it appears to the general public. Except for the grumpy, long-serving nurse, the characters are almost kind to each other. And any fan of Frederick Wiseman’s institutional portraits might be surprised by the relative calm of Marie-Lou’s institution, the Garden of Freedom, although there is a subplot about her management’s pressure to maximize profits.
However, the film is based on real life. Hamaguchi’s screenplay was inspired by a book called “When Life Suddenly Takes a Turn,” which contains correspondence between anthropologist Maho Isono and philosopher Makiko Miyano. In this case, you’ve created a narrative with a navigation area. The director has opted for slower running times since at least 2015’s 317-minute “Happy Hour,” and like that film, “All of a sudden” makes it hard to distinguish between indulgence and seriousness. And frankly, I could have watched Mari draw on her white board for another hour.
It’s been five years since the festival introduced a new section called Cannes Premiere, and it’s still not clear to me what this section is supposed to be about. Some of the booths feature directors that programmers usually like but obviously couldn’t get into the competition (but they also didn’t want to lose to Venice in the fall). The rest of the series seems to be films that may have stayed in the Un Certain Regard sidebar for a long time but were somehow deemed too commercial.
Géraldine Nakache “Think Well,” an alluring picture of a troubled marriage, it falls into the usual category. The main distinguishing factor is that several of its main characters are observant French Jews, a group rarely seen on screen. (And I don’t think I’ve ever seen a movie about two French Jews who meet in Dubai and marry a rabbi based there.)
In the opening scene, Gil (Monia Chokri) is shown visiting a mikvah, or ritual bath. When she returns home, she tells her husband, Jacques (Niels Schneider), that although she put her film crew on hold when their daughter was born, a cinematographer has offered her a part-time job. Jacques wonders if the gig will interfere with their plans to have a second child or if Gil will see her ex on set. But that kind of small thing seems to be just the beginning.
Nakache uses a time-varying structure to show that Jacques is not only a jealous husband, but also an abusive one. He interferes with Gil’s communication with family and friends. He installs baby-monitor cameras to keep an eye on him around the house. He makes distress calls to keep her in her job. The title refers to a line in which Gil is encouraged to turn to self-delusion: “If you think good,” he is told, “only good things will happen.” The storyline is predictable, but a powerful final shot closes the movie on a powerful note, and Chokri’s dynamic, layered performance carries the film.
