Drive My Car

Ryusuke Hamaguchi's Drive My Car, adapted from Haruki Murakami's short story, is a quietly devastating drama that explores grief, infidelity, and the slow, painful process of human connection. The film follows Yusuke Kafuku, a stage actor and director still haunted by his wife Oto's sudden death two years earlier. When he accepts a residency in Hiroshima to direct a multilingual production of Chekhov's Uncle Vanya, he is assigned a stoic young chauffeur, Misaki Watari. What begins as an awkward arrangement transforms into a shared journey of emotional reckoning.

Hamaguchi expands Murakami's story into a three-hour epic, adding layers of theatrical performance and cross-cultural communication. The film's deliberate pacing and intimate scenes create space for its characters to reveal their wounds gradually. Premiering at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival, where it won Best Screenplay, Drive My Car went on to receive four Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture, and won Best International Feature Film. It was the first Japanese film ever nominated for the top Oscar. [edit]

Yusuke Kafuku is a celebrated stage actor and director living in Tokyo with his wife Oto, a screenwriter with a peculiar creative process. She invents story ideas during sex, then recounts them to Yusuke the next morning. Their marriage is loving and collaborative, but Yusuke discovers Oto has been having affairs. He confronts her but does not expose what he knows. Before they can resolve anything, Oto dies suddenly from a brain hemorrhage.

Two years later, Yusuke is still consumed by grief and unanswered questions. He accepts a residency at a theater festival in Hiroshima to direct Uncle Vanya. Festival rules require all participants to be chauffeured, so he is assigned Misaki Watari, a quiet young woman with a troubled past. Yusuke initially resents the arrangement, preferring to drive himself in his red Saab 900 while listening to a cassette of Oto's voice. But Misaki's calm, precise driving gradually earns his trust.

Yusuke casts actors from multiple countries, including Lee Yoo-na, a mute Korean actress who performs in sign language, and Koji Takatsuki, a popular but scandal-ridden actor who was one of Oto's lovers. The multilingual production becomes a metaphor for the difficulty of genuine communication. As rehearsals progress, Yusuke and Misaki share long drives, slowly opening up about their losses. Misaki reveals that her mother died in a landslide, and that she blames herself. Their conversations are sparse but profound, each revelation chipping away at their emotional armor.

The film interweaves Yusuke's past with his present, showing flashbacks of his marriage and the night he discovered Oto's infidelity. He also forms a tense bond with Takatsuki, who offers him a perspective on Oto that complicates his memories. The rehearsals for Uncle Vanya mirror the characters' internal struggles, as they confront their own versions of the play's themes: regret, longing, and the search for meaning. The narrative builds toward the festival performance, where Yusuke must finally face his grief head-on.[edit]