2 hours 59 minutes | Rated M (Nudity & sex scenes)
Two years after his wife’s unexpected death, Yusuke Kafuku (Hidetoshi Nishijima), a renowned stage actor and director, receives an offer to direct a production of Uncle Vanya at a theater festival in Hiroshima. There, he meets Misaki Watari (Toko Miura), a taciturn young woman assigned by the festival to chauffeur him in his beloved red Saab 900. As the production’s premiere approaches, tensions mount amongst the cast and crew, not least between Yusuke and Koji Takatsuki, a handsome TV star who shares an unwelcome connection to Yusuke’s late wife. Forced to confront painful truths raised from his past, Yusuke begins — with the help of his driver — to face the haunting mysteries his wife left behind. Adapted from Haruki Murakami’s short story, Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s Drive My Car is a haunting road movie traveling a path of love, loss, acceptance, and peace.
★★★★★ a profoundly beautiful film. Daily Telegraph (UK)
★★★★★ It is an engrossing and exalting experience. The Guardian
★★★★★ It feels as expansive as the whole world. Washington Post
★★★★★ It’s beautiful in every conceivable way. San Jose Mercury News
★★★★★ Drive My Car is one of 2021’s best films MovieFreak.com
★★★★★ …vehicular poetry of the sorrow from which we run, the collisions that awaken us, and the healing gained from every bump in the road. Rogerebert.com
★★★★★ One of the year’s finest films, set at ‘Uncle Vanya’ rehearsals and behind the wheel of a Saab. Chicago Tribune
★★★★★ Head-spinning in its psychological scope and dramatic sweep. Little White Lies
WINNER Best International Film: Oscars | Academy Awards 2022
WINNER Best Picture Non-English Language: Golden Globes 2022
WINNER Best Screenplay: Cannes Film Festival 2021
WINNER Fipresci Prize: Cannes Film Festival 2021
WINNER Jury Prize: Cannes Film Festival 2021
Reviews:
Drive My Car shows people devastated by loss, allowing time to ripen those wounds and distort their understanding of love and purpose. BuzzFeed News
Drive My Car is quiet and stirring, anchored by exquisite performances by Nishijima and Miura, and enriched with a sense of both longing and forward propulsion by director Hamaguchi. Detroit News
Drive My Car chugs along with brilliant linearity-leaping across weeks and years to chronicle an artist’s struggle to turn grief into inspiration. The Ringer
Hamaguchi is adept in character study, his films unfolding as if they were novels, totally consuming. Austin Chronicle
For a century and more, film directors have explored crosscurrents between art and life, and how one informs the other. Hamaguchi makes that exploration a fully humanized one. Chicago Tribune
