Yukiko Sode’s slice-of-life epic All the Lovers in the Night clocks in at just under two and a half hours, but feels far more alive than that daunting runtime might suggest. Centered on an extremely shy woman, Fukuko (Yukino Kishii), who works as a freelance proofreader, Sode patiently establishes her routine before subtly breaking it up over a period of several months. The result is a solid if not quite audacious entry in the burgeoning subgenre of films about lonely Japanese women opening up to the outside world, familiar in recent years from directors like Iwai Shunji (A Bride for Rip van Winkle) and Ohku Akiko (Hold Me Back). As in the latter’s My Sweet Grappa Remedies, Sode’s heroine finds the courage to embrace new experience in that great social lubricant alcohol, and it leads to her meet-cute with an older man, introducing the possibility of friendship — and maybe even romance.
The man Fuyoko bumps into just before vomiting after day-drinking an excessive amount of sake from a thermos at a community center is Mitsutsuka (played by none other than Asano Tadanobu), a kindly and quiet middle-aged man. The two eventually establish a routine where they meet for coffee and discuss the physics of light. As it happens, he’s a high school physics teacher, and she’s interested in but knows nothing about the subject. Fuyoko’s only other regular social interactions, meanwhile, are with her sort-of agent, a former co-worker who sends her proofreading jobs named Hijiri, an extrovert with a reputation for promiscuity whose seeming freedom masks an underlying hostility and deep unhappiness — a cautionary tale for our anxiety-ridden heroine as she ventures out of her shell. In warm, lovely images, Sode patiently builds Fuyoko’s world: her home office in her tasteful, book-lined studio apartment, her phone calls and occasional outings with Hijiri, her coffee dates with Mitsusuka, her quiet nights thinking over the nature of light.
All the Lovers in the Night builds slowly, and like all slice-of-life stories, it is about the accumulation of details more than the progression of incident. But that’s not to suggest Sode’s film is ever boring, as it instead establishes a quiet momentum that culminates, as it must, in breakdowns and revelations. But even these remain underplayed, detached, and curious, much like Fuyoko herself. One flashback sequence a third of the way into the film breaks rhythm and seems designed to give some motivation for Fuyoko’s shyness, an inclusion that — along with Sode’s motivation for featuring it — is misjudged, disruptive, and unnecessary. Sode’s characters and her actors’ performances are authentic and compelling enough without necessitating an inciting incident; providing one only limits Fuyoko’s world, which functions in contradiction to every other action and image in the film which built around expanding it. But that frustrating misstep aside, All the Lovers in the Night largely lands as a quiet gem, a lovely, resonant work and a moving portrait of cozy alienation.
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