Premiering in Un Certain Regard at Cannes, Yukiko Sode’s adaptation of Mieko Kawakami’s acclaimed novel is a tender, quietly seductive portrait of urban loneliness and the longing for connection. For cinephiles, it may evoke the intimate conversations of Éric Rohmer and the wandering female gaze of Agnès Varda’s Cléo from 5 to 7, yet its silences, restraint, and delicate melancholy remain profoundly Japanese.Fuyuko is a freelance proofreader in Tokyo, more comfortable correcting other people’s words than finding her own. Her life has narrowed into work, solitude, and one private ritual: walking alone through the city at midnight on her birthday. Her outgoing colleague Hijiri occasionally pulls her toward the world, but it is a chance encounter with Mitsutsuka, a reserved high school physics teacher, that begins to loosen something inside her. “Next time, let’s talk about light,” he tells her. Over coffee, conversations about physics, and tentative meetings, an awkward tenderness slowly grows between two people who have learned to keep much of themselves hidden. Their connection is fragile, complicated by secrets and past wounds, yet Sode understands that for someone accustomed to isolation, even the smallest step toward another person can feel enormous.Shot on richly textured 16mm, the film makes light itself part of its emotional language — glowing windows, reflections, shadows, and faces emerging from the night. Yukino Kishii gives a beautifully vulnerable performance, matched by Tadanobu Asano’s gentle, understated presence. Patient, romantic, and quietly haunting, All the Lovers in the Night is about those moments when another person suddenly illuminates a life we had almost stopped noticing.Nicole Guillemet