Review: ‘Drive My Car’ (2021), starring Hidetoshi Nishijima, Tôko Miura, Masaki Okada and Reika Kirishima

March 27, 2022

by Carla Hay

Hidetoshi Nishijima and Toko Miura in “Drive My Car” (Photo courtesy of Janus Films)

“Drive My Car” (2021)

Directed by Ryûsuke Hamaguchi

Japanese, Korean and Mandarin with subtitles

Culture Representation: Taking place primarily in Japan, the dramatic film “Drive My Car” features an all-Asian cast characters representing the working-class and middle-class.

Culture Clash: While grieving the death of his wife, a theater director, who’s in charge of staging the Anton Chekhov play “Uncle Vanya,” finds himself unexpectedly tangled up in the life of the young female driver who was assigned to chauffeur him. 

Culture Audience: “Drive My Car” will appeal primarily to people interested in artsy, well-acted but somewhat long-winded movies about personal relationships and trying to heal from grief.

Masaki Okada and Hidetoshi Nishijima in “Drive My Car” (Photo courtesy of Janus Films)

The emotionally layered and very drawn-out “Drive My Car” won’t appeal to people with short attention spans, but it’s an immersive journey that memorably depicts the complexities of human lives. It’s a three-hour movie where the last hour is the best hour. Until then, viewers have to watch how the story slowly unfolds to show how grief can be both a burden and an emotional shield. If viewers have the patience to sit through the first two hours of the movie, they will be rewarded with some knockout acting in that last third of the movie.

“Drive My Car” is based on Haruki Murakami’s Drive My Car” short story that was in his 2014 short-story collection “Men Without Women.” “Drive My Car” director Ryûsuke Hamaguchi and Takamasa Oe adapted the story into the “Drive My Car” screenplay. The movie, which had its world premiere at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival, where it won three awards for Best Screenplay, FIPRESCI Prize Competition and Prize of the Ecumenical Jury. “Drive My Car” then earned four Oscar nominations: Best Picture (the first movie from Japan to get this Academy Award nomination in this category); Best Director; Best Adapted Screenplay; and Best International Feature Film, a category in which “Drive My Car” has received numerous prizes, including an Academy Award.

In the beginning of “Drive My Car” (which takes place in Japan), 47-year-old writer/actor/director Yûsuke Kafuku (played by Hidetoshi Nishijima) is seemingly happily married to his younger wife Oto Kafuku (played by Reika Kirishima), a former actress who now works as a screenwriter on a TV drama series. They both live in Tokyo. The movie’s opening scene shows the two spouses cuddling naked in bed, in a post-coital embrace. Oto tells Yûsuke a story about a teenage girl who sneaks into the house of a 17-year-old boy named Yamaga, who is her high school crush. Yûsuke asks questions about how this story will evolve.

Oto doesn’t know it yet, but his wife doesn’t have much longer to live. He drives her to work, and she introduces him to an actor named Kôshi Takatsuki (played by Masaki Okada), who’s in his mid-to-late 20s. On another day, Yûsuke comes home unexpectedly to find Oto and Kôshi having sex with each other, but they do not see Yûsuke. A shocked and dismayed Yûsuke quietly leaves, without telling either of them what he saw.

After witnessing this act of infidelity, Oto suddenly dies of a brain hemorrhage, with no warning signs that this would happen. To try to take his mind off of his grief, Yûsuke agrees to got to Hiroshima to be a visiting artist doing a residency at a theater workshop that’s staging the Anton Chekhov play “Uncle Vanya,” which Yûsuke will be directing. Yûsuke is assigned a chauffeur to drive him while he’s working at the festival: Masaki Watari (played by Tôko Miura), a mostly solemn and quiet woman who is 23 years old.

At first, Yûsuke refuses the idea to be driven around. However, the festival supervisors Yuhara (played by Satoko Abe) and Gong Yoon-soo (played by Jin Dae-yeon) insist that Yûsuke have a driver because a previous artist in residence accidentally ran over and killed someone in the past. And to prevent any further liabilities, all artists in residence are required to have a professional driver as part of the job.

Masaki asks Yûsuke if he objects to her being his driver because she’s a young woman. He denies it and says because his red Saab Turbo is an older car with quirks that someone who’s unaccustomed to the car might have a hard time driving. Masaki assures Yûsuke that she’s a very experienced driver. And she makes a deal with him to reassure him: If he’s unhappy with her driving, he can take over at any time.

A lot of the screen time in “Drive My Car” is about these car trips, with lots of scenic aerial shots of the car driving on coastal highways or on busy city streets. But the soul of the story is what develops inside of the car, as Yûsuke and Masaki slowly get to know one another and open up to each other about some of the emotional pain in their lives. Masaki is a financially struggling, aspiring actress, but she has had to put those plans on hold to survive in low-paying “gig economy” jobs to pay her bills.

Meanwhile, “Drive My Car” has numerous scenes about the audition process and rehearsals for “Uncle Vanya.” Observant viewers will notice the parallels in the “Uncle Vanya” story and what Yûsuke goes through in the movie. One of the actors who auditions for the play is Kôshi, who is cast in the role of Vanya, even though Kôshi thinks that he’s too young for the part.

Kôshi thinks that Yûsuke is a more age-appropriate actor for the role, but Yûsuke refuses, because he says that the Vanya role is too emotionally draining, and Yûsuke wants to focus on directing the play. Yûsuke also explains that he’s doing unconventional casting for this version of “Uncle Vanya.” At first, it seems like Yûsuke could be setting up Kôshi to fail in a role that’s beyond Kôshi’s talent and life experience. However, as time goes on, it’s revealed in subtle and not-so-subtle ways why Yûsuke doesn’t want to be an actor in this production.

Kôshi is a ladies’ man who wants Yûsuke to be his acting mentor. However, Yûsuke is somewhat standoffish with Kôshi at first. The movie shows if Yûsuke eventually tells Kôshi that he knows that his late wife Oto and Kôshi had a sexual fling. Kôshi has some other secrets, which are also revealed. There are hints that Kôshi is hiding something when, on more than one occasion, he angrily confronts a man taking photos of him when Kôshi is out in public.

“Drive My Car” is a story about the frailty of relationships and surprising revelations that occur through human connections. Without wallowing in heavy-handed preaching, “Drive My Car” is an artfully made film that invites viewers to show more empathy for people who might seem to have stable or successful lives, but who might be privately going through some emotionally devastating struggles. The movie doesn’t present any easy answers to life’s problems, but it does advocate for people to open their minds to others who might become unexpected companions during times of overwhelming grief and loneliness.

Janus Films released “Drive My Car” in select U.S. cinemas on November 24, 2021. HBO Max premiered the movie on March 2, 2022.

2021 New York Film Festival: talks and panels announced

September 22, 2021

The following is a press release from Film at Lincoln Center:

Film at Lincoln Center announces Talks for the 59th New York Film Festival (September 24 – October 10). All NYFF59 Talks are presented by HBO®, supplementing festival screenings with a series of free panel discussions and in-depth conversations among a wide range of guests.

With last year’s NYFF events taking place entirely in virtual and socially distanced drive-in settings, this year’s Talks promise a much-needed and long-awaited return to in-person gatherings, with a robust lineup of spirited and engaging conversations between moderators, filmmakers, and audiences.

2021 marks the birth centenary of NYFF co-founder Amos Vogel. In recognition of this milestone, which is being celebrated with a Vogel tribute in the NYFF59 Spotlight slate, the festival will present the first annual Amos Vogel Lecture. Filmmaker Albert Serra (The Death of Louis XIV, NYFF54; Liberté, NYFF57), whose singular and transgressive approach to cinema epitomizes the vision of Vogel’s landmark text, Film as a Subversive Art, will deliver this inaugural edition of the lecture. The Amos Vogel Centenary Retrospective and lecture are sponsored by MUBI.

Additional highlights include career-spanning Deep Focus dialogues with director Mira Nair, star Sarita Choudhury, and cinematographer Ed Lachman on the making of Revivals selection Mississippi Masala, moderated by novelist Jhumpa Lahiri; Jane Campion in an extended conversation with Sofia Coppola about Campion’s NYFF59 Centerpiece selection The Power of the Dog and its mesmerizing exploration of masculinity; Ryûsuke Hamaguchi on his two Main Slate selections, Drive My Car and Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy; and Apichatpong Weerasethakul in an in-depth conversation about Memoria, his first film set outside of Thailand and his first outing with an international star, Tilda Swinton.

Crosscuts returns after its successful launch last year with pairings of filmmakers across NYFF sections, genres, and styles. This year’s lineup includes conversations between Mia Hansen-Løve (Bergman Island) and Joachim Trier (The Worst Person in the World) as well as Silvan Zürcher (The Girl and the Spider)and Alexandre Koberidze (What Do We See When We Look at the Sky?), with more events to be announced in the coming days.

Roundtable discussions highlight thematic trends within the program and consider the films in the context of wider cultural conversations. Among these: Cinema’s Workers, which will explore past and ongoing labor movements within film and art communities with panelists Abby Sun, Dana Kopel, Kazembe Balagun, and filmmaker Ted Fendt (Outside Noise, NYFF59); and two Film Comment Live conversations presented by the reputed publication. The Velvet Underground &the New York Avant-Garde brings together Todd Haynes, Ed Lachman, and critic Amy Taubin to discuss the making of The Velvet Underground and Songs for Drella, and the enduring legacy of the historic moment of artistic innovation they so vividly capture, while Festival Report enlists a group of critics in a lively wrap-up discussion with Devika Girish and Clinton Krute, Co-Deputy Editors of Film Comment, about the NYFF59 lineup.

Talks are organized by Devika Girish and Madeline Whittle, in collaboration with Eugene Hernandez and Dennis Lim.

Free tickets for NYFF59 Talks will be distributed on a first-come, first-served basis beginning one hour prior to each event at the corresponding box office. Tickets are limited to one per person, subject to availability. For those unable to attend, video from these events will be available online on Film at Lincoln Center’s YouTube channel at a later date.

NYFF59 will feature in-person screenings, as well as select outdoor events. In response to distributor and filmmaker partners and in light of festivals returning and theaters reopening across the country, NYFF will not offer virtual screenings for this year’s edition.

Proof of full vaccination will be required for all staff, audiences, and filmmakers at NYFF59 venues. FLC requires all guests to maintain face coverings consistent with the current CDC guidelines inside their spaces regardless of vaccination status. Additionally, NYFF59 will adhere to a comprehensive series of health and safety policies in coordination with Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts and state and city medical experts, while adapting as necessary to the current health crisis. Visit filmlinc.org/safety for more information.

Presented by Film at Lincoln Center, the New York Film Festival highlights the best in world cinema and takes place September 24 – October 10, 2021. An annual bellwether of the state of cinema that has shaped film culture since 1963, the festival continues an enduring tradition of introducing audiences to bold and remarkable works from celebrated filmmakers as well as fresh new talent.

DESCRIPTIONS


THE 2021 AMOS VOGEL LECTURE: Albert Serra

2021 marks the birth centenary of Amos Vogel, the pioneering film programmer, author, and co-founder of the New York Film Festival. As the flagship event of NYFF’s corresponding tribute, the festival is inaugurating the Amos Vogel Lecture, to be delivered annually by an artist or commentator who embodies the spirit of Vogel’s cinephilia and brings it into conversation with the present and future of the medium. For this first edition, we are proud to welcome the filmmaker Albert Serra (The Death of Louis XIV, NYFF54; Liberté, NYFF57). Serra’s singular and transgressive approach to cinema epitomizes the vision of Vogel’s landmark text, Film as a Subversive Art, whose French edition features a foreword by the director. Serra’s original lecture will be followed by a conversation with the programmers of the NYFF59 Spotlight sidebar devoted to Vogel’s curatorial legacy. Sponsored by MUBI.

Tuesday, October 5, 4:00pm, Walter Reade Theater

DEEP FOCUS

In-depth dialogues with festival filmmakers & their collaborators

The Making of Mississippi Masala

Moderated by Jhumpa Lahiri

Released in 1991, Mira Nair’s Mississippi Masala endures as a breakthrough work of American independent and diasporic cinema. The rare film to explore relations between South Asian and African-American communities in the South, Nair’s second fiction feature stars Sarita Choudhury as a Ugandan Indian refugee who falls for a self-employed carpet cleaner played by Denzel Washington, cueing familial and communal tensions and pitting passion against tradition. To celebrate the 30th anniversary of the film’s release and the premiere of its new restoration in NYFF59’s Revivals section, join us for a conversation with Nair, Choudhury, and cinematographer Ed Lachman, moderated by the writer Jhumpa Lahiri, whose novel, The Namesake, Nair adapted in 2006. Sponsored by Turner Classic Movies (TCM).

This event will take place in Damrosch Park immediately following the September 25 screening of Mississippi Masala and will be accessible to ticket-holders.

Jane Campion

Moderated by Sofia Coppola

Following her Best Director win at this year’s Venice Film Festival, Jane Campion returns to NYFF with her first feature since 2009’s Bright StarThe Power of the Dog, the Centerpiece selection of NYFF59. Known for her incisive portraits of womanhood, Campion turns her lens to masculinity in this new film, which adapts Thomas Savage’s 1967 novel of the same name. The results are thrilling: The Power of the Dog is a mesmerizing, psychologically rich variation on the American western, and a compassionate examination of repressed sexuality and the fragility of patriarchy. We are thrilled to welcome the legendary New Zealand director for an extended conversation with filmmaker Sofia Coppola (On the Rocks, NYFF58) about this latest entry in Campion’s masterful, decades-spanning career.

Saturday, October 2, 4:00pm, Amphitheater.

Ryûsuke Hamaguchi

Making his return to NYFF with not one but two Main Slate selections, Japanese filmmaker Ryûsuke Hamaguchi (Asako I & II, NYFF56) affirms his stature as a true rising star of world cinema, and one of the foremost chroniclers of the ebbs and flows of human relationships. With Drive My Car and Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy—a pair of vividly realized and ceaselessly surprising emotional epics—Hamaguchi demonstrates his singular talent for tracing the intricate workings of the heart amid the perennial paradoxes of modern life. Join us for an in-depth conversation with the writer-director to explore the resonances and shared preoccupations of his new films and his prolific body of work.

Sunday, October 3, 7:00pm, Amphitheater

Apichatpong Weerasethakul

For over two decades, Apichatpong Weerasethakul has been celebrated as one of world cinema’s most original auteurs, with films that constantly refract and reinscribe the contours of narrative, reality, and temporality. His new feature—which comes six years after 2015’s Cemetery of Splendour (NYFF53)—reaffirms his peerless status even as it takes the Thai auteur into uncharted territory: Memoria is Apichatpong’s first film set outside of Thailand, in Colombia; his first English- and Spanish-language venture; and his first outing with a bona fide international star, Tilda Swinton. We are thrilled to welcome the filmmaker for a deep-dive conversation about his extraordinary oeuvre and the elliptical novelties and familiar mysteries of his latest masterwork.

Thursday, October 7, 6:30pm, Amphitheater

CROSSCUTS

Conversations between filmmakers across festival sections, genres, and styles

Mia Hansen-Løve & Joachim Trier

With their respective NYFF59 Main Slate selections Bergman Island and The Worst Person in the World, Mia Hansen-Løve (Things to Come, NYFF54) and Joachim Trier (Thelma, NYFF55) achieve new creative heights in their parallel trajectories as two of the preeminent European filmmakers of their generation. Both artists have spent the last 15 years interrogating, with great compassion, the moral and emotional crosscurrents that undergird human behavior, and their latest films refine these inquiries with an invigorating reflexive frankness. Join the two writer-directors for a conversation about their influences and inspirations, their distinctively personal and philosophical approaches to cinematic storytelling, and the endlessly generative themes of romantic ambivalence and evolving self-knowledge that animate their new films.

Monday, September 27, 7:00pm, Amphitheater

Silvan Zürcher & Alexandre Koberidze

In an NYFF lineup with a record number of new and emerging filmmakers, Alexandre Koberidze’s What Do We See When We Look at the Sky? and Ramon and Silvan Zürcher’s The Girl and the Spider—both sophomore features—stand out for their sui generis approaches to cinematic narrative and form. Formally assured and intellectually audacious, the two films, in their own unique ways, electrify the quotidian with currents of desire, romance, and modern myth. We’re excited to bring Silvan Zürcher and Koberidze together to discuss their filmic inspirations and aspirations; their trajectories within Swiss and Georgian cinema, respectively, and in world cinema at large; and their experiences at the renowned DFFB (the German Film and Television Academy Berlin), which all three directors attended.

Saturday, October 2, 7:00pm, Amphitheater

ROUNDTABLES

Panels and discussions that connect the festival to the themes of the moment

Cinema’s Workers

Moderated by Gina Telaroli

The phrase “dream factory” has long been invoked to capture the magical, transporting allure of the American film industry, but too often, as consumers, our fascination with the dream obscures the factory: the workforce that breathes life into the movies and delivers them to audiences. Behind the glitz and glamor of cinema is the labor of seen and unseen workers across the fields of production, distribution, exhibition, and curation. As questions of labor and equity take center stage in art communities in New York and beyond, this roundtable brings together a multifaceted group of film workers to discuss past and ongoing labor movements in cinema. Panelists include Abby Sun (curator, the DocYard, My Sight Is Lined with Visions), filmmaker Ted Fendt (Outside Noise, NYFF59), Kazembe Balagun (project manager, Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung—New York Office), and Dana Kopel (writer, editor, and organizer).

Sunday, September 26, 7:00pm, Amphitheater

Film Comment Live: The Velvet Underground & the New York Avant-Garde

Two films in this year’s NYFF lineup take us back to the ‘60s heyday of the New York avant-garde: in the Main Slate, Todd Haynes’s The Velvet Underground offers a revelatory portrait of the milieu that gave rise to the eponymous band and its boundary-pushing music, while in Revivals, Ed Lachman’s Songs for Drella captures Lou Reed and John Cale in concert, paying tribute to the late Andy Warhol with riveting intimacy. Presented by the editors of Film Comment, this special roundtable brings together Haynes, Lachman, and critic Amy Taubin to discuss the making of the two films as well as the enduring legacy of the historic moment of artistic innovation they so vividly capture.

Sunday, October 3, 4:00pm, Damrosch Park

Film Comment Live: Festival Report

For the festival’s final week, a group of critics will gather together for a spirited wrap-up discussion with Devika Girish and Clinton Krute, Co-Deputy Editors of Film Comment, about the movies they’ve seen in the NYFF59 lineup. Panelists include Molly Haskell (critic and author), Bilge Ebiri (staff critic, Vulture), and Phoebe Chen (critic and scholar).

Saturday, October 9, 7:00pm, Amphitheater

FILM AT LINCOLN CENTER

Film at Lincoln Center is dedicated to supporting the art and elevating the craft of cinema and enriching film culture.

Film at Lincoln Center fulfills its mission through the programming of festivals, series, retrospectives, and new releases; the publication of Film Comment; and the presentation of podcasts, talks, special events, and artist initiatives. Since its founding in 1969, this nonprofit organization has brought the celebration of American and international film to the world-renowned Lincoln Center arts complex, making the discussion and appreciation of cinema accessible to a broad audience and ensuring that it remains an essential art form for years to come.

Support for the New York Film Festival is generously provided by Official Partners HBO, Campari, The New York Times, and Vanity Fair’sAwards Insider; Benefactor Partners Netflix and Citi; Supporting Partners Topic Studios, Hearst, and Radeberger Pilsner; Contributing Partners Dolby, Turner Classic Movies, Manhattan Portage, NYC Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment, and UniFrance; and Media Partners Variety, Vulture, Deadline HollywoodThe Hollywood Reporter, WABC-7, The WNET Group, and IndieWire. All NYFF59 Talks are presented by HBO. American Airlines is the Official Airline of Film at Lincoln Center.

Copyright 2017-2024 Culture Mix
CULTURE MIX