Drive My Car      3 ½ stars

Drive My Car, by director Ryusuke Hamaguchi is a real challenge to the viewer’s endurance that shows two people making a connection who have both endured unspeakable, painful loss. Yusuke Kafuku is a well known actor and director whose wife of twenty years, a television screenwriter died suddenly at home. Two years later he is picked to direct a stage production of a Chekhov play in the city of Hiroshima. There he is assigned a young woman driver who is to transport him around in his own old Saab, because the company doesn’t accept the risk for the valuable talent driving themselves. The film is highly complex and has a real story to tell, but at three hours in length this is a movie that really takes its time to develop. There are long scenes devoted to the script readings and rehearsals of the play where we wonder what Kafuku is trying to accomplish. He is obviously in pain over the loss of his wife even though it has been years since the event. The young driver seems like a minor character at first, but with her being around so much these two finally find that they share great tragedy in their lives. The lines and scenes from the Chekhov play serve to bring out the sense of loss too. One odd twist is that each of the play’s characters does their lines in a different language making it a multilingual play, a strange choice. It is also no mystery that the latter part of the movie happens in Hiroshima, a city that suffered great tragedy. That plays a part in the story as well. The movie includes some rather frank discussion about sex between the characters that is important to the plot, that we westerners might have trouble with. The movie was good but was very long. It delivers a dramatic message about enduring and living through the pain of life.