Cannes: Devils May Care

A French-Japanese co-production centers on Marie-Louise, a workaholic director of a senior care facility in the Paris suburbs, and Mari, a Japanese theater director. Marie-Louise implements a new care protocol called Humanitude, based on real-life training that emphasizes attention to each individual patient. Mari stages an experimental production about Franco Basaglia, an Italian psychiatrist who abolished psychiatric asylums. The story connects care practices with the chemistry of the two women’s relationship through an earnest dialogue that moves across personal histories, the philosophy of chance, and the effects of capitalism on their work and the world. Their differing scales of work create foil-like dynamics that lead to collaboration advancing both ideals.

"The film is a French-Japanese co-production about the intimate friendship between Marie-Louise (Virginie Efira), the director of a senior care facility in the Paris suburbs, and Mari (Tao Okamoto), a Japanese theater director. Marie-Louise is a workaholic who's been putting tremendous effort into instituting a new care protocol at the facility called Humanitude, a real-life program that instructs care workers in giving greater attention to each individual patient, while Mari is staging an experimental production about Franco Basaglia, an Italian psychiatrist who abolished "mancomio," or psychiatric asylums."

"This dual thesis on care and the chemistry between Efira and Okamoato results in an extraordinarily life-affirming three and a half hours of cinema, carried by a profoundly earnest dialogue between the two women that ranges from their personal histories to the philosophy of chance to the effects of capitalism on their work and the world. Nearly sharing a name, they're not just friends but foils of a sort, with one working on an institutional scale and the other in a smaller and more personal way."

"In coming together, they eventually forge a kind of collaboration that advances both of their ideals. The film got me immensely interested in the figure of Basag"

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