Dri­ve My Car – first-look review

Japan­ese direc­tor Ryusuke Ham­aguchi con­firms his sta­tus as a world class tal­ent with this scin­til­lat­ing, intu­itive and rad­i­cal adap­ta­tion of emo god­head Haru­ki Murakami’s melan­cholic short sto­ry ​‘Dri­ve My Car’, which fea­tured in the 2014 col­lec­tion, ​‘Men With­out Women’.

What Ham­aguchi and co-writer Taka­masa Oe do with this film is three­fold: they duti­ful­ly haul Murakami’s core text to the screen; they reform it, spin out sec­tions and recal­i­brate the weight giv­en to cer­tain char­ac­ters; and, final­ly, they seam­less­ly ush­er in Hamaguchi’s own abid­ing fas­ci­na­tions with the ways per­for­mance per­me­ates our every­day lives, the cathar­tic qual­i­ties of con­fes­sion, and the inabil­i­ty to tru­ly know even basic truths about our friends, lovers and acquaintances.

The open­ing cred­its drop in at about the 40 minute mark of this lux­u­ri­ant­ly-paced three hour opus, fol­low­ing an extend­ed pro­logue in which meek stage actor Kafuku (Hidetoshi Nishi­ji­ma) dis­cov­ers that his wife, an actor and screen­writer for TV, is sleep­ing with one of her young stars. On the day she appears to want to con­fess to the hus­band she appears to adore, she drops dead and drags the ques­tion of her moti­va­tion, her sin­cer­i­ty and her true feel­ings with her to the grave.

Flash for­ward two years, and Kafuku is still in a state of sup­pressed mourn­ing, en route to Hiroshi­ma to direct an exper­i­men­tal pro­duc­tion of Chekov’s Uncle Vanya in which all the parts are deliv­ered in dif­fer­ent lan­guages (includ­ing sign). Under­ly­ing all of the nar­ra­tive twists and drift­ing episodes is this para­dox­i­cal notion of humans hav­ing a preter­nat­ur­al sen­si­tiv­i­ty for com­mu­ni­ca­tion and being alive to ges­ture and emo­tion. Yet all that seems to count for nought because what’s the point in being able to com­mu­ni­cate when no-one wants to actu­al­ly say any­thing mean­ing­ful and reveal the thoughts that remain locked up in the recess­es of the soul?

The title of the film refers to Watari (Tôko Miu­ra), the sullen, chain-smok­ing female dri­ver the fes­ti­val organ­is­ers have hired for Kafuku, who is very much a periph­er­al play­er for the film’s open­ing two hours, before the pair even­tu­al­ly decide to mov­ing­ly open up to one anoth­er about their var­i­ous woes and heart­break­ing back­sto­ries, purg­ing all there is to be purged in an attempt to find some kind of spir­i­tu­al peace.

There are some nar­ra­tive rev­e­la­tions that feel like they’ve been pulled from the gaud­i­est of soap operas lat­er in the game (a few of which per­haps sul­ly this oth­er­wise exem­plary, dense and minute­ly orches­trat­ed screen­play), yet Ham­aguchi large­ly rejects the nat­ur­al edit­ing and plot rhythms of con­ven­tion­al movies, elect­ing instead for opu­lent, broad-can­vas dia­logue exchanges. And rather than drag­ging on, each one feels per­fect­ly cal­i­brat­ed, as the dra­ma is slow­ly teased out of inter­ac­tions rather than just dumped there as a green flag to move on to the next scene.

Dri­ve My Car is end­less­ly fas­ci­nat­ing and rich, the type of film which you could spend hours analysing and come no clos­er to feel­ing as if you’ve land­ed on its true intent. But it is not repel­lant and closed-off, more like a Jacques Riv­ette film, where a sense of sin­cere emo­tion is care­ful­ly wreathed in play­ful­ness and won­der – like there is always some­thing mag­i­cal and oth­er­world­ly in the air despite the hum­drum domes­tic of the settings.

It also stands as tes­ta­ment to the notion that expand­ing out short sto­ries could be a supe­ri­or form for film adap­ta­tion to trun­cat­ing nov­els. It is very much of a piece with Hamaguchi’s 2015 film Hap­py Hour par­tic­u­lar­ly in the way it under­cuts expec­ta­tions and refus­es to present char­ac­ters as bina­ry arche­types for the audi­ence, instead paint­ing every­one as an allur­ing and enig­mat­ic shade of grey. And even with its very minor faults, Ham­aguchi is just oper­at­ing on a lev­el above and beyond the major­i­ty of his art­house peers.

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