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Nominated for 4 Academy Awards including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay!

Based on a story by Haruki Murakami, Ryûsuke Hamaguchi directs a moving drama of theatre actor Yûsuke (Hidetoshi Nishijima) whose beloved wife died suddenly. Accepting an offer to direct a production in Hiroshima, introverted young Misaki (Tôko Miura) is assigned to be his chauffeur. As the two strangers gradually become friends, Yûsuke begins to face the haunting mysteries that his wife left behind. Winner of Best Foreign Film at the 2022 Golden Globes in addition to multiple awards at Cannes, including Best Screenplay, Hamaguchi's drama is acclaimed as one of the best films of the year.

"In this quiet masterpiece, Hamaguchi considers grief, love, work and the soul-sustaining, life-shaping power of art." -The New York Times

After his wife's unexpected death, Yusuke Kafuku, a renowned stage actor and director, receives an offer to direct a production of Uncle Vanya in Hiroshima. There, he begins to face the haunting mysteries his wife left behind.

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TOMATOMETER 98%
AUDIENCE SCORE 82%

Reviewed by PAUL BYRNES - TheAge

At any one time, the number of filmmakers who believe deep in their bones that film is capable of producing great art, and who go for it, is small. So when one comes along, we're entitled to get excited. Ryusuke Hamaguchi, take a bow.

Drive My Car has won a bucketload of awards since its debut in competition at Cannes last year. It lost to Titane, but picked up the award for best screenplay. It has topped many lists of the best films of 2021, but who cares about those in the era of " I did my own research'' ?

For many, three hours of Japanese subtitles will dissuade them, but it's tougher than that. The film is based on a short story by Haruki Murakami and it moves at glacial pace. It's mysterious, impenetrable, creeping forward like a lava flow of ideas and nuance.

It's also throat-catchingly beautiful, as sad as a funeral, and wise in a way few films aspire to be. Novels sprawl, music expresses the inexpressible, theatre can thrill: a movie with the ambition and gall to steal from all of these, as it creates its own world, is pushing its luck. Thank heavens for filmmakers who push their luck.

The plot: an esteemed actor/ director in theatre loses his loving wife, a TV screenwriter, to a cerebral haemorrhage. Twenty years earlier, they had lost a daughter. Now Yusuke Kafuku (Hidetoshi Nishijima) must put his life back together. He takes a twomonth residency at a theatre in Hiroshima. An international cast of young actors has applied to work with him on a production of Chekhov's Uncle Vanya. One of them, Takatsuki (Masaki Okoda), is a matinee idol who had an affair with his wife Oto (Reika Kirishima). Kafuku casts him as Vanya. The actors will perform in their native languages, with projected titles.

At Kafuku's request, the theatre company has rented him a house

by the sea, an hour from the theatre. He likes to listen to a tape his wife made for him, to help him memorise his lines. The theatre insists he must also use an appointed driver, Misaki (Toko Miura). The long passages in the car become the film's secret door: intimate, revealing conversations happen, as the characters learn to trust each other. The young woman who drives him has her own deep family wounds.

It's both simple and confusing as an idea. The script makes heavy use of Chekhov's lines as deliberate mirrors, which can get a little tiresome, but it's all to do with the film's obsessive concentration on words and sounds as meaning. Names here are cyphers: Kafuku, the director's name, sounds like Kafka when spoken by a Japanese person. Oto, his wife's name, means " sound'' . Chekhov's words, the text, have the power to free the actor from him- or herself, he tells his cast. We will repeat them until they do.

Throughout, we are haunted by the stories his wife would make up after they had sex. The film begins with one of these, in a dark bedroom with pale blue twilight outside. The lighting is so lovely, the film had me at hello.

The acting is another of the deep pleasures. This is a film of great physical and visceral pleasure, despite all the sadness. The characters speak only when they have something to say. There's a lot of silence too, which scares most filmmakers . Only the brave know how to use it.

That's partly a Japanese thing. Gesture and negative space carry great weight. A passionate kiss between husband and wife implies meaning: the Japanese for most of their history did not openly kiss. Thus, this is " a modern couple'' . It's late in the film before anyone bows. Yet one of the most important moments comes when one character bows so deeply to another in a gesture of great power. After three hours, I felt like watching it again: it's that good.

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