Japan’s Oscar© 2022 Winner for Best International Feature: ‘Drive My Car’ by Ryusuke Hamaguchi

 

Ryûsuke Hamaguchi has created a multi-layered nuanced film which slowly reveals its characters in ways we want to discover, witness and savor.

A renowned stage actor and director (Yusuke Kafuku played by Hidetoshi Nishijima) and his wife (Reika Kirishima), a screenwriter, are happily married until she suddenly dies and leaves behind a secret. Two years later, Kafuku, still unable to fully cope with the loss of his wife, receives an offer to direct a play at a theater festival and drives to Hiroshima with his car. There, he is assigned a chauffeur (Tôko Miura), and as they spend time together, they confront the mystery of their families which have quietly haunted them.

It has rightfully garnered a long list of prizes since premiering last July at the Cannes Film Festival, where it won three awards, including best screenplay. It was also named best picture by the National Society of Film Critics in the United States, as well as by critics’ associations in Los Angeles and New York. Most recently, it took the 2022 Golden Globe for best picture in the non-English language category.

Watch the trailer here.

Adapted from two of the stories featured in Haruki Murakami’s collection, “Men Without Women,” Drive My Car, is the exploration of one man’s life after the sudden death of his wife. One story is “Scheherazad,” the story of a woman who’s telling tales while she was having sex. Another is “Kino” which is the name of the main character who is a man being cheated on by his wife. Within that story, the state that he’s able to reach is similar to Kafuku’s own journey’s destination. The rest of the intertwined elements of Drive My Car were written by Ryûsuke Hamaguchi himself along with Takamasa Oe.

Hamaguchi says, “I felt an affinity for its theme of having two people deepen their relationship via having conversations in cars.”

Layers of the story are revealed slowly and the characters’ inter-relationships are also revealed in a way that envelops the audience. For instance, Kafuku reveals he knew about his wife’s infidelity and he suspected one of her amours was a young actor he subsequently hires to be in the play he is directing. However this actor’s own character is so flawed that his actions propel the story into an unexpected direction. The chauffeur’s personal story brings Kafuku to a realization he can only share with the chauffeur and which brings both characters to a sort of closure in their separate burdens of mourning. Drive My Car runs three hours but not a frame is superfluous and the reward is a masterful and poignent shared meditation on mournng.

The film went on to play in San Sebastian and Toronto Film Festivals. ISA The Match Factory sold the film to Janus for the USA. For Austria to Polyfilm, the Baltics to A-One Films Baltic, Benelux — September, Croatia — Kino Mediteran, Denmark — Camera, Estonia — A-One, Finland — Future, France — Diaphana, Germany — Rapid Eye Movies, Italy — Tucker, Japan producer Bitters End, Norway — Arthaus, Poland — Gutek, Singapore — Lighthouse, Slovenia and Ex-Yugoslavia—Demiurg-Cvetka Flakus, Spain — Elastica, Sweden- Njuta, Switzerland — Sister, Taiwan — Andrews, Turkey — Mars, UK — Modern.