Drive My Car (Ryusuke Hamaguchi, 2021) Hidetoshi Nishijima (as Mr Kafuku)
This is a three-hour-long film in which not a lot happens, so it's not obvious why it's so satisfying. As the title implies, there is lot of time spent in the titular car. But it's shot steadily and it's not tedious. Which is characteristic of the whole film: there is a steady pace throughout, along the three or four story strands, with the interest being maintained by the integrity of the acting.
Speaking of interest, it would help any viewer to be already quite interested in theatrical and literary matters, as the main character is a theatre director and actor, and a good deal of the movie is concerned with the production of one particular play, Chekov's Uncle Vanya. The more familiar you are with that, the more you'll get out of the this film.
I enjoyed it very much indeed (though it's 60 years since I read the play).
Becca Voelcker:
Since making his first film in 2008, and with increasing momentum since his breakthrough epic Happy Hour in 2015, Hamaguchi has been quietly building an oeuvre of dramas that revolve around romantic tangles, people who work in theatre and what ties these themes together – social scripts, performance, deception, memory. ... Roleplay and performance fascinate Hamaguchi, evidenced so finely in Happy Hour and, more recently, Asako I & II (2018) and Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy (2021). Drive My Car contains numerous extended takes in which actors workshop lines and scenarios in improvised scenes. Language is key here – be it Japanese, with its nuances of politeness and elliptical implication, or body languages and facial expressions. Mr Kafuku’s cast for Uncle Vanya comprises actors who use Japanese, Korean, Mandarin and Korean Sign Language. sightandsound.
IMDb page.
Wikipedia page. Excerpt:
On Rotten Tomatoes, 98% of 136 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 8.6/10. The website's critics' consensus reads, "Drive My Car's imposing runtime holds a rich, patiently engrossing drama that reckons with self-acceptance and regret." According to Metacritic, which assigned a weighted average score of 91 out of 100 based on 39 critics, the film received "universal acclaim".
The film received a positive review from Manohla Dargis in the New York Times. Writing for The Guardian, Peter Bradshaw gave the film five stars out of five and called it an "engrossing and exalting experience".
Garry Gillard | New: 8 February, 2022 | Now: 2 April, 2022