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. Winner of three prizes at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival, including Best Screenplay.
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 byNishijima andMiura, and enriched with a sense of both longing and forward propulsion by directorHamaguchi. 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
Its three-hour running time flashes by. Toronto Star
