Drive My Car – Film Review

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 television 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.

Ryusuke Hamaguchi‘s Drive My Car is one of those films that will leave you feeling exhausted in the best way possible by the time you see the end credits roll. It’s a three-hour movie that focuses on a stage actor and director and a relationship that blossoms between him and his chauffer, and to some, that may sound like the most boring and uneventful film there is. But I would have to disagree wholeheartedly.

No, there’s never a scene in Drive My Car where somebody absolutely explodes and starts to yell at somebody. There’s no intense scene where you feel like something major could happen. There isn’t even a single scene where you feel worried about our lead characters, but all of this is okay because at its core, Drive My Car is a film about finding beauty in the mundanities of life. It’s about making new connections with people and learning to live and love.

It’s one of the only films from 2021 where I truly felt moved by the time it was over. Usually, when I watch a film as long as this one, I get incredibly bored midway through because, more often than not, films with that length are filled with scenes that quite literally feel pointless and only exist just to pad the running time out more. But there’s legitimately not a single scene in Drive My Car that feels like it could’ve been removed to make the story flow better. Every frame here is worth looking at. Every frame tells a story and every line of dialogue means something too.

The first scene of the movie may strike you as odd when you first see it (as it did me), but even that scene comes back into play later on and then things start to make more sense. It’s marvelously acted by everybody involved with the project, but Hidetoshi Nishijima is particularly great as Yūsuke Kafuku. He gives one of the most layered and emotionally charged performances of the year, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he got snubbed during awards season. I’d like to be proven wrong, but I doubt I will be.

Drive My Car is very similar in style and tone to Edward Yang‘s Yi Yi – one of my favorite films of all time. Both films are incredibly long and feature endless scenes of people talking and living out their day-to-day lives. But the script is so clean and precise, the story is so simple yet so heartwarming and emotionally powerful, that I’d dare say it’s impossible not to feel wrapped up in Drive My Car by the time it comes to a close.