Japanese auteur Hamaguchi Ryusuke‘s first French-language film, “All of a Sudden,” premiered in competition at Cannes on Friday to a seven-minute standing ovation, the longest of the fest so far.
The three-hour-plus drama — about two women brought together by terminal illness — moved the audience in the Palais greatly, with many viewers weeping openly during the credits. Hamaguchi looked visibly moved as his leads, Virginie Efira and Okamoto Tao, wiped away tears of their own. Other celebrities attending the screening included Riley Keough and Eric Cantona.
“Thank you for staying with us for this long movie,” Hamaguchi told the crowd through a translator as the applause died down. “This film would not have been possible without the great actors and crew.”
In “All of a Sudden,” Efira plays the director of a Parisian nursing home operating under the philosophy of “humanitude” — a French approach to care that places the dignity of each patient at its center. Okamoto plays a terminally ill Japanese theater director whose arrival at the facility draws the two women into a deepening bond that transforms her counterpart’s understanding of what it means to truly care for another person. The supporting cast includes Marie Bunel and Jean-Charles Clichet.
