Can men and women be friends? Sho Miyake’s gently empathetic and sharply observant “All the Long Nights” answers this age-old question with the expected “yes.” But his protagonists — a woman with premenstrual syndrome and a man with panic disorder — are not the usual medical melodrama stereotypes.
Based on Maiko Seo’s novel, the film depicts its main characters’ conditions with welcome touches of humor, if not the quirky variety found in Shunsuke Shinada’s 2019 comedy “Little Miss Period,” another rare film that examines what is euphemized as “that time of the month.”
And just as he did in his award-winning 2022 boxing drama “Small, Slow but Steady,” Miyake takes a naturalistic approach to his story by focusing more on character development than plot twists and filming from an objective middle distance. Meanwhile, the minimalist score by DJ Hi’Spec and the autumnal palette of cinematographer Yuta Tsukinaga, who also worked with Miyake on “Small, Slow but Steady,” bring an evocative beauty to the proceedings.