Cannes film festival: Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s ocean-hopping treatise on love and mortality is undeniably beautiful – but it works best in its quieter, compassionate moments rather than the flurries of self-conscious solemnityFalling seriously ill, like falling in love, can happen all of a sudden – although this film is not exactly about either. Drive My Car director Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s new movie, co-scripted by Hamaguchi with the Franco-Japanese screenwriter Léa Le Dimna and his first not set entirely in Japan, is a bold and high-minded if rather pedagogic work that spreads itself over three hours. It’s tender and sometimes beautifully made, but also contrived and occasionally features some too-good-to-be-true caring characters. Frankly, it’s rather precious.Hamaguchi and Le Dimna have taken as their starting point the nonfiction book You and I: The Illness Suddenly Get Worse by Makiko Miyano and Maho Isono, a meditative correspondence between a philosopher and medical professional on the subjects of love and mortality. Hamaguchi has opened this out to create a drama set in Paris and Kyoto, and it’s incidentally hard not to suspect that Hamaguchi, like many a celebrated movie director spending so much time on the international festival circuit, has been led to create an uneasy international mixture. Continue reading...

Source: https://www.theguardian.com/film/2026/may/15/all-of-a-sudden-review-care-home-ryusuke-hamaguchi-cannes