REVIEW: ‘All The Long Nights’ Captures Intimacy Through Difficulty

All the Long Nights is an intimate story based on Maiko Seo’s novel of the same name. In it, we first meet Misa (Mone Kamishiraishi). She is a meek working professional who suffers from an acute case of PMS (Premenstrual Syndrome) that leaves her mercurial. She has outbursts of anger, moments of falling asleep when she shouldn’t, and a depression that she can’t shake. To make matters worse, her PMS results in workplace incidents that often end in her feeling humiliated in front of her peers, and of course, she quits and isn’t able to hold onto jobs.

After five years of unsteady employment, Misa finds a sense of belonging in the quiet offices of Kurita Science Corp., where she assembles parts for children’s science kits. But when her peace is disrupted by the solitary and anti-social Takatoshi (Hokuto Matsumura), who drinks too much seltzer water for her liking, it all starts to change.

But Takatoshi’s daily drink isn’t something he can simply just stop doing because Misa dislikes it, even when she yells. It’s a daily ritual that helps calm his debilitating panic disorder. More alike than they are different, the two share a mutual difficulty in struggling to function in everyday life that they slowly begin to bond over as they push each other to live “normal lives.”

Shot on 16mm, director Sho Miyake’s film is deeply intimate. From start to finish, All The Long Nights captures its characters’ loneliness and growth as they work to help each other recover—or rather live the best they can. The film is sweet in the small ways that Misa and Takatoshi adapt to each other and push each other. But that sweetness never undercuts the weight that the two have to carry in their everyday lives, thanks to their conditions.

This is also echoed in the first act of the film as the audience sees Misa in what could be considered humorous situations. While there is something comedic about Misa falling asleep on a bench in the rain or in the middle of her office’s meeting room, the film never aims to make it so. Instead, the visual setup shows that the banal action that would often illicit laughs is actually a tense one. It’s humorous and humiliating, and Misa’s life becomes more focused with each subsequent uncontrollable outburst.

Director Miyake is tender in how she frames and highlights the difficulties that her characters endure and overcome. The understanding isn’t to “get better” but rather to understand what can make their lives worth living and how they can at least achieve a normalcy that works for them. Two sides of one coin, Takatoshi’s panic disorder highlights the gaps in the Japanese mental health system. But Misa’s PMS becomes a blistering critique of a woman’s inability to take agency of her health unless a doctor believes that she can.

That said, outside of an institutional level, All The Long Nights isn’t concerned with casting blame. Instead, it feels more like a film about understanding and caring about people enough to help them make life just a little bit easier, one step at a time. As much as we see Misa and Takatoshi together, we also see the people around them. Most notably Takatoshi’s girlfriend.

It’s Misa’s story that resonates the most with me. She is plagued once a month by PMS and ultimately has to find a way to live with it. When the herbal remedy prescribed by a doctor won’t work and he refuses to respect her wishes for birth control, she has to just find a way to get through it. But that also means she has to come to terms with the lack of control this brings.

The awkwardness displayed throughout All The Long Nights can be tender but also uncomfortable. It all depends on the people involved in the situation. Mone Kamishiraishi and Hokuto Matsumura, as Misa and Takatoshi, respectively, are captivating to watch. Their performances are each powerful, allowing the audience to explore their characters’ vulnerabilities both individually and together.

The softness they bring in their interactions that brushes against how they first came to meet with Misa’s anger, fueling it, endearingly grows over time. The longevity of their relationship is what gives it depth. Unlike immediate movie protagonist connections that happen over the course of a day, All The Long Nights shows the duo evolving over the course of years.

I first learned about the leads, Mone Kamishiraishi and Hokuto Matsumura, from the animated feature performances in Your Name and Suzume. Now, after watching their authentically vulnerable performance, I can’t wait to see them star in more live-action roles. It’s clear that they’re both phenomenal seiyuu talent and heartfelt on-camera actors as well.

All The Long Nights is a simple film that, within its small scope, explores how two people can weave their difficulties together into something beautiful. A quiet film, the film spins around a human core that forces the audience to inspect how they relate to the world and those they meet in it. Less about love or even like, All The Long Nights is about connection and how everything else spins out from it.

All The Long Nights screened as a part of Japan Cuts.