Around forty mintues into Ryusuke Hamaguchi's "Drive My Car" the credits finally appear and in the scene that immeadiately follows the credits the title is explained. This is a 'road movie' with a difference; the physical journeys taken by Yusuke Kafuku, (a superb Hidetoshi Nishijima), are realtively short but the emotional journeys he takes go on much, much longer. He's an actor, seemingly happily married to a beautiful screenwriter and then one day he catches her having sex with another young actor. They aren't aware of his presence and it's a secret he keeps to himself.
What follows is a deeply engaging roller-coaster of a movie in which the art of acting, and later directing, becomes Yusuke's way of dealing with infidelity, jealousy, possible revenge and real grief, his car becoming a metaphor for how he keeps his feelings bottled up. Each journey he takes with his young female driver, (they're rehearsing 'Uncle Vanya' at this stage and Yusuke is the director), brings him closer to acceptance of all that's happened in the past, not easy when his wife's young lover joins the company.
Of course, Hamaguchi's film is as much about language, in all its forms, and acting as it is about the relationships between the characters. The tiny details in Hamaguchi and Takamusa Oe's screenplay, adapted from Haruki Murakami's story, are phenomenol; not a gesture or a frame of this wonderful film is wasted and at three hours it never outstays its welcome. Unquestionably one of the very finest films of the year.
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