Film Review: Hamaguchi's "Drive My Car"----Secrets and Confessions in a Red Saab

A red 1987 Saab 900 Turbo serves as a refuge for Tokyo stage actor and director Yusuke in Ryusuke Hamaguchi's 2022 Oscar-winning "Drive My Car", based upon a short story by Haruki Murakami.  The vintage left-hand drive car (in a RHD country) from an extinct company doesn't seem like such an odd choice when we see Yusuke and his TV screenwriter wife Oto listening to vinyl records on an old turntable, and observe that while driving, Yusuke listens to cassette tapes of Oto reciting dialog to help him learn his lines. The car serves as a kind of confessional, too, as the couple discusses their decision not to have another child after losing a 4-year old daughter to pneumonia...

Director Hamaguchi throws us into the story without bothering with opening credits; these appear over 40 minutes into the film, after we are already drawn into his themes of secrets and loss. The story darkens after Yusuke has a road accident which his doctor diagnoses as a result of glaucoma, and darkens again when he discovers that Oto's connection to a young TV actor named Koshi is more intimate than she has hinted...

If "Drive My Car" is a road movie, it is partly one about regret for roads not taken.  We see Yusuke drive off into the night rather than engage when Oto asks when they can talk, because there is apparently something she needs to tell him.  After driving around listening to his wife's voice on tape, he returns to discover that she has collapsed from a cerebral hemorrhage.  She does not recover. Two years later, an emotionally shut-down Yusuke agrees to direct a production of Chekhov's "Uncle Vanya" in Hiroshima.  An unusual aspect of the production is that dialogue will be delivered in any languages the individual cast members speak; the finalists speak Japanese, Korean, English, and sign, with subtitles for the audience.  Another quirk of the program is that the theater company assigns Yusuke a driver, owing to an accident caused by a cast member in a prior production.  The driver turns out to be Misaki, a woman of 24, whose mastery of impassive inscrutability equals that of Yusuke, who is 47.

The selection of Hiroshima and its environs as a location fits Hamaguchi's theme of loss, and recovery from grief, as well as providing some stunning landscapes for the red car to traverse.

One of the reasons the film draws us in easily is that the performances are so unforced and natural that at times we feel like we're watching a documentary.  So natural that it feels like we're intruding when Oto (Reika Kirishima), tells Yusuke (Hidetoshi Nishijima) a story she's writing while they make love. The story is about a high school girl who sneaks into the home of her unsuspecting crush to leave personal items in his bedroom.  Later in the film, after he's been cast in "Uncle Vanya", TV actor Koshi (Masaki Okada) tells Yusuke that Oto had told him the same story, and that, unlike Yusuke, he knows the ending.  These secrets are revealed, of course, in the back seat of the confessional red Saab, while the imperturbable Misaki (Toko Miura) drives.

An emotional turning point in the film happens when the theater company manager played by Jin Dae-yeon invites the director and driver to dinner at his home. Yusuke doesn't want to intrude, but he realizes the manager has something important to tell him.  It turns out that he's been keeping a secret too...

It's that Lee Yoo-na (played by Park Yu-rim) who has a lead role in the production, delivered in the Korean version of sign, is actually his wife.  After being welcomed by Lee Yoo-na and the couple's cheerful pooch, Yusuke and Misaki sit down with them to converse and enjoy the food.

This conversation is one of the rare moments when Yusuke cracks a smile.  He reveals that Misaki drives so smoothly and skillfully that "when you drive with her, you forget you're in a car."

It's a moment of levity that prepares the characters for more surprises and revelations which should be shared only in general terms, because "Drive My Car" is a suspense movie as well as a road movie.  One development is that the actor playing Uncle Vanya is arrested by the local police, forcing the theater company managers to tell Yusuke he has only two choices: either to play Uncle Vanya himself as he is so familiar with the part, or to close the production down.  We'll leave  you to guess how that turns out...

...because there's more for the protagonists to process than the possible shutdown of the play. Misaki reveals to Yusuke that she has felt guilt and despair since she escaped from a collapsing house during a landslide, and her mother did not.  They travel to snowy Hokkaido in one of the film's last scenes, to the landslide site, in another moment of emotional reckoning.  This movie about a play threatened with a shutdown, a story within a story, was filmed during the pandemic shutdown, with the snow scenes completed in November 2020.

In the film's final scene, we see Misaki shopping in a Korean supermarket.  She places her groceries in the red Saab, and a canine pal emerges from the back seat for a snuggle.  Some have suggested that this indicates that the protagonists have moved on with their lives, and that Yusuke has given Misaki the car.  But director Hamaguchi has given us clues in previous scenes to decode this one.  The cheerful pooch seems to be the same one that attracted Misaki's attention at dinner with the manager and his wife. Our understanding of how this story ends may hinge on whether this is the same dog.

Having viewed these scenes multiple times, I've decided it is indeed the same pooch.  So my interpretation is that the theater troupe has gone to Korea to put on "Uncle Vanya" there.  The Korean-speaking manager and his wife, a member of the cast, would of course make the trip as well.  And Yusuke, with his deteriorating vision, would want to have his driver along, especially as she'd expressed interest in Korea.  This is a more believable explanation for the "same dog" plot turn, because nobody in their right mind would ever give away this dog... 

Photo Credits:  

All photos are from the film, produced by "Drive My Car" Production Committee, C & I Entertainment, Culture Entertainment, and The Match Factory; distributed by Bitters End.