All of a Sudden (2026) ‘Cannes’ Movie Review: A Transcendently Thorough Testament to the Furthest Reaches of Human Compassion

“Show, don’t tell”: that eternal tenet of storytelling which, in the film sphere, is treated like a hallowed commandment for what began as a purely visual medium. But sometimes, we show exactly by telling, and in the largely dialogue-driven character studies of Ryūsuke Hamaguchi, the blurred lines separating our words and our intentions take on a particular density when every participant in the conversation is laying their souls bare in the most unembellished expressions of human vulnerability. “All of a Sudden” (Original title: “Soudain,” 2026), in the grand pantheon of sprawling, literarily inclined odysseys like “Drive My Car” and “Happy Hour,” finds Hamaguchi at his most relentlessly verbose, and quite possibly at his most relentlessly compassionate.

In a space where communication should theoretically be hampered—a Japanese filmmaker assembling his first project overseas, in (where else…) Paris—Hamaguchi’s efforts to probe the minds of women who lay their souls out to dry in the wine-scented breeze actually find themselves at their most eloquent and thoroughly probing. Whatever language barrier might ostensibly exist for the director who already (technically speaking) filmed his greatest opus in eight different languages doesn’t seem, in praxis, to actually exist, let alone overtake his fascination with the barriers between what we say and what we accept.

Marie-Lou (Virginie Efira) believes very much in the value of emotional frankness, as the head of a Parisian nursing home transitioning into the experimental (and controversial) realm of “Humanitude.” A technique that requires treating each and every patient with an open degree of autonomy and lack of implied authorial force and condescension, this practice shouldn’t really be controversial in theory, but Hamaguchi’s thoroughness in examining all angles brings even the whiniest and most seemingly spiteful pushback into the context of genuine concerns. Who assumes responsibility when these newly mobile patients take a nasty fall? How would such a painstaking transitional training period affect those caregivers who need to learn and adapt to an entirely novel concept of rigorous patient care?

But it’s Marie-Lou’s caring approach that helps her calm the teenage Tomoki (Kodai Kurosaki) as the severely autistic teenager seems to have been separated from his family. And while it doesn’t take long for that family to come and claim him, it takes even less time for Marie-Lou to connect with the like-minded Mari (Tao Okamoto), a Japanese theatre director whose own perspective on life under the constant shadow of its impending finality strikes a penetrating chord with the French nursing expert in her endless quest to bring a Humanitude approach into a tangible, lasting framework—the play that sparks the eternal flame of this friendship is titled “Da vicino, nessuno è normale,” which translates from Italian to “Up close, nobody is normal.”

What evolves from here is tantamount to Hamaguchi’s own take on any one of Richard Linklater’s “Before” films, as Marie-Lou and Mari spend an entire afternoon and night walking and talking through the streets of Paris, into Marie-Lou’s clinic, and right through to the warm embrace of dawn. And this is only within the film’s first half, as “All of a Sudden” decompresses into a series of guttingly tender conversations. Practicing what you preach is one thing, but Hamaguchi is here to ensure that the “preaching” part takes precedence before the practice is set into unconditional motion.

This could certainly read as potentially cumbersome and aimless, but the genius of Hamaguchi’s vision comes in the contrasting sprawl of his runtime against the restraint of his technique, leaving his performers to slowly and willingly unload every belief and insecurity without even a shred of cynicism—Mari’s vision of life and treatment has been informed by her diagnosis with stage 4 lung cancer that threatens to suddenly and immediately put her curiosity and compassion to a permanent end. So if a mid-film discussion on the instability of capitalism at 4 AM reads as a little “been there, done that,” that exhaustive resignation translates exactly how it feels to be so invigorated in the recognition of a solution to all of life’s problems, and seemingly paralyzed in your inability to put it into practice.

Humanitude, as Marie-Lou explains to her new instant best friend, only works when everyone does it, and all Hamaguchi can then do with this truth is turn the necessity of coping into a breathlessly affecting treatise on how the anguish of that collective failure can be smoothed over by a collective act of solidarity—sometimes, just being there to listen, or laying out your thoughts through the intimate outlet of knitted finger puppets.

What Efira and Okamoto bring to that joined act, then, only works through the synergy of their reciprocal warmth (Efira learned Japanese for this, potentially her most generous and egoless role), and through the gradual chill that rises in the air when the viability of their world-changing potential seems entirely at the mercy of the unavoidable ephemerality of their instantly unshakeable union.

If Ryūsuke Hamaguchi’s cinema has always been about how the choices we make come to collapse on everyone around us, then “All of a Sudden” is perhaps the auteur’s most daring and urgent call towards a solution to that ever-present blight on the human condition. One might view film’s uncompromising length and unapologetic diffuseness as a blatant exercise in stylistic narcissism, but rarely has a character study been so naked and willing in its constant considerations of a communal call to healing.

Read More: Cannes 2026 Oscar Predictions | Palme d’Or to Best Picture Oscar Analysis

All of a Sudden (2026) Movie Links: IMDb, Rotten Tomatoes, Wikipedia, Letterboxd

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