A chance encounter between a caregiver and an artist sparks a cross‑cultural friendship that questions normalcy, mortality, and the conditions of compassion.
The film follows Marie‑Lou Fontaine, director of a Paris care home where residents are on decline—people living with dementia, physical fragility, and the gradual erosion of autonomy. The story begins as the care home becomes a battleground of values, with Marie‑Lou trying to implement Humanitude, a philosophy of care centred on eye contact, touch, listening, and preserving dignity. She genuinely believes in it, but her staff—overworked, underpaid, and exhausted—see it as unrealistic. The care home becomes a metaphor for a capitalistic society caught between efficiency and humanity.
Emotionally, Marie‑Lou is consumed by her work; we see little of her personal life. The story reaches a turning point when she encounters a lost child during her commute. In a park, she meets Tomoki, a Japanese boy and unexpectedly calms him in fluent Japanese, ensuring his safety. This moment leads her to the boy’s father, Goro Kiyomiya—and to Mari Morisaki.
Mari is a Japanese theatre director living in France, intellectually curious, artistically alive, and quietly confronting her advancing cancer. Their chance encounter grows into a friendship that becomes the film’s emotional core, which also brought Efira and Okamoto a shared Cannes prize for Best Actress this year. As the two characters’ relationship deepens, they speak bilingually about mortality, illness, responsibility, art, and what it means to live well in the face of death. Hamaguchi structures long stretches of the film around conversation rather than plot, allowing ideas to flow—a style familiar from Drive My Car and Happy Hour. Their connection is sensual, intellectual, and cross‑cultural. Men are peripheral; what matters is their shared belief that people can heal—or at least remain dignified—through attention and mindful presence.
During the press conference of the film in Cannes, I wanted to ask Hamaguchi‑san a question, but time ran out. “Da vicino nessuno è normale”—the opening line of Franco Basaglia’s theatre piece—was also the opening line of Goro’s theatre. How does the camera portray normalcy or anomaly through the lens? I think I found my answer: it is about looking close enough to realise the uniqueness of each one. Such uniqueness goes beyond everything we call normal. Once again, Hamaguchi folds theatre into cinema to remind us that characters are constructs, and that conversations—punctuated by pauses, landscapes, and silences—do not aim for naturalism. They are not dramatic, but not natural either. However, at three and a half hours, they may flow too long, though I’m unsure how popular that opinion will be.
As Mari’s illness progresses, they go to Kyoto for a short trip and decide to return after a few days. I was a bit baffled by the narrative decision, but the massage scene becomes a cue for later actions performed by the residents of the care home in a corporal workshop. What remains memorable is the chemistry between the two women: their bilingual, bicultural exchanges; their shifting roles as carer and patient—and sometimes the reverse.
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