DRIVE MY CAR
Japan's Haunting Front Runner For An Oscar
Japan’s official entry for the Best International Feature Film at the 94th Academy Awards, Drive My Car, follows a relationship that blossoms between a widowed, middle-aged stage actor/director (Hidetoshi Nishijima) and his twenty-year-old chauffeur (Tôko Miura). Ryusuke Hamaguchi directed the movie from a screenplay he co-wrote with Takamasa Oe and based on Haruki Murakami’s 2014 short story of the same name. Drive My Car competed for the Palme d’Or at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival, and while it lost to Titane, it did win the Best Screenplay award, making Hamaguchi and Oe the first Japanese filmmakers to win it at Cannes.
Two years after the death of his wife, screenwriter Oto (Reika Kirishima), Yūsuke Kafuku (Nishijima) moves to Hiroshima to direct a new adaptation of Uncle Vanya. A part of his new employment requires him to hire a chauffeur, a prospect with which he is not pleased. However, on the recommendation of his mechanic, he reluctantly hires the much younger Misaki (Miura). Much like him, she is battling grief and running from guilt. Unfortunately, the trailer does not give much away, or perhaps it does. Drive My Car is not a film you go to for its plot but character development. Because it’s such an emotional, character-driven drama, it’s a hard movie to discuss.
Drive My Car currently holds an impressive 100% rating on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes and an 89% on Metacritic. It came out in American theaters on November 24, 2021. The trailer promises us a meditation on grief and friendship. However, don’t let the nearly 3-hour runtime hold you back. Viewers have been raving about this film, which critics have described as a haunting tale of loss.
