A recently appointed director of a Parisian home for the elderly, Marie-Lou is a crusader for a pioneering approach to care that seeks to restore dignity to elderly patients regardless of their social status. On her commute home, Marie-Lou spots a Japanese boy running through a nearby park, apparently lost. The boy has strayed from his grandfather, Goro, a theatre actor out for a walk with his director, Mari, who is in the latter stages of terminal cancer. The friendship that develops between the two women leads them to discover the importance of living in the present, eclipsing the significance of their past and their plans for the future.
"I thought of Eric Rohmer, My Night at Maud’s (1969), for example, a film built almost entirely on philosophical dialogue, and yet found a million viewers in France. There is an audience that can receive that kind of conversation as entertainment. So I thought, if one of my two protagonists is French and the other Japanese, and they are actually talking to each other, physically present with each other, maybe that could become a film." (Ryusuke Hamaguchi)
Ryusuke Hamaguchi
Born in 1978, in Kanagawa, Japan. After graduating from the University of Tokyo, Hamaguchi worked in the commercial film industry for a few years before embarking on documentary and art filmmaking. His biggest successes came in 2021, when Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy won the Silver Bear at Berlinale and Drive My Car the Best Screenplay Award at Cannes.