Ryusuke Hamaguchi Will Direct Paris-Set Drama All of a Sudden Starring Virginie Efira and Tao Okamoto

While he’d long been rumored to be working in France on a film titled Our Apprenticeship, Ryusuke Hamaguchi told us that project was hardly more than a rumor. He’s now nevertheless set to direct his first feature in the country, with Variety reporting on the imminent start for All of a Sudden, which will star Virginie Efira (Benedetta, Other People’s Children) and Tao Okamoto. Co-scripted by Léa Le Dimna, it loosely follows Makiko Miyano and Maho Isono’s published correspondence You and I – The Illness Suddenly Get Worse, which Hamaguchi said left him “deeply moved”––to the extent that it was the only post-Drive My Car offer that intrigued him––and for the last couple years he’s been traveling to France with some regularity to workshop material with local actors.

All of a Sudden concerns a Japanese theater director (Okamoto) and French nursing-home director (Efira) who connect over illness and death. Hamaguchi hopes “to show a Paris that’s a little different from the clichés we might have about the city,” citing an attraction to areas that are not “touristy.” He’s among the bigger cinephiles making films at any major scale today, and in the project’s announcement shared his love of French cinema:

“French cinema has always been an important inspiration for me but also for many other Japanese people and Japanese filmmakers. Chabrol, of course, but to a larger extent the Nouvelle Vague. Rohmer, Rivette, Godard, Truffaut, obviously, and even before them Grémillon, Becker, Renoir and Bresson.”

Further, Hamaguchi expressed the aim to create a bridge between France and his native Japan with an approach called humanitude.” As he says, “It’s [a] French method that was imported in Japan and is now practiced in several venues there, and puts the human dimension at the heart of the treatment care, for the integrity of each human being.”

With All of a Sudden being shopped at Cannes this month, expect more news shortly.

The post Ryusuke Hamaguchi Will Direct Paris-Set Drama All of a Sudden Starring Virginie Efira and Tao Okamoto first appeared on The Film Stage.