Two years after his wife's unexpected death, Yusuke Kafuku, 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, 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 Koshi Takatsuki, a handsome TV star who shares an unwelcome connection to Yusuke's late wife.
I gotta say, author Haruki Murakami has been very fortunate with the movie adaptions of his stories; Tony Takitani (2004), Norwegian Wood (2010, Burning (2018) among others. His short story Drive My Car appeared in the collection Men Without Women (2014) and the film version by Ryusuke Hamaguchi took the world by storm and won a slew of awards. Rightfully so, the look of the film has been praised to the skies. Often we get these long distance shots which places the characters, or the red car, far away and I loved that particular technique.
The interplay between the characters are the meat of the bone here and being a three-hour long film, there's bound to be small missable details to be found in rewatches. Drive My Car is a celebrated extraordinary work, and a great story with a lot of depth.
Genre: Drama. 2h 59min.