A leisurely road trip
SIT BACK AND ENJOY THE NARRATIVE RIDE THE MOVIE DRIVE MY CAR TAKES YOU ON
FILM REVIEW
Drive My Car
Cast: Hidetoshi Nishijima,
Toko Miura Director: Ryusuke
Hamaguchi Duration: 2 h 59 m Available: At the Lightbox in
Toronto; Nov. 27 in Edmonton; Dec. 2 in Kingston; Dec. 10 in Vancouver; and Dec. 22 in Ottawa, with more dates
to follow.
If you’ve ever taken a long, leisurely road trip — as opposed to fighting rush-hour traffic or trying to get to the cottage in good time — then you know the kind of calm that can descend upon you gradually as the road and the landscape furl and unfurl around you.
That’s the kind of tone director and co-writer Ryusuke Hamaguchi seems to be reaching for in his newest film, Drive My Car. It’s based on the short story by Haruki Murakami, whose work also inspired Changdong Lee’s excellent 2018 film Burning. Japan’s entry for best international feature film at the next Academy Awards, Drive My Car runs to three hours, with a 40-minute prologue before the opening credits even roll.
It’s here that we’re introduced to Yusuke (Hidetoshi Nishijima), a theatre actor and director whose wife, Oto (Reika Kirishima), is a famous screenwriter. The two have a happy but not overly passionate relationship that hits a snag when he learns she’s cheating on him. But in the short term, he does nothing.
We pick up Yusuke’s story two years later. He’s been invited to direct a production of Uncle Vanya at a theatre festival in Hiroshima, and arrives in his beloved red Saab. But the festival has a strict rule: The talent can’t drive themselves. And so Yusuke reluctantly shifts to the back seat, letting young chauffeur Misaki (Toko Miura) get behind the wheel.
What follows is a fascinating, multi-layered metaphor for power dynamics — between driver and passenger, to be sure, but also between director and actor, play and performer, writer and text. During long conversations on the road — Yusuke had requested accommodations far from the festival, thinking he’d have time to listen to a recording of Vanya while he drove — the two gradually open up to one another about their oddly parallel pasts, and the events that brought each to Hiroshima.
Yusuke also gets to know Takatsuki (Masaki Okada), a young, troubled actor with a connection to Oto, and whom Yusuke casts in the role of Uncle Vanya, much to the surprise of organizers, who assumed he would take the part himself. Hard to know if he makes that choice innocently, ulteriorly or perhaps subconsciously.
There might even be an element of all three, in the way that a road trip can, when it’s long enough, accommodate all kinds of detours and layovers, wrong turns, and misdirections, on its way to the same final destination. Drive My Car takes the scenic route. My advice it to sit back and enjoy the ride. ★★★★