DRIVE MY CAR
After winning Best Screenplay at Cannes, Ryūsuke Hamaguchi’s DRIVE MY CAR (trailer here) has been racking up awards in the past few weeks—named Best International Feature at the Gotham Awards and Best Film by the New York Film Critics Circle—and I can assure you that the movie is deserving of all of that and then some. Based on a short story by Haruki Murakami, the film follows stage director Yūsuke (played by Hidetoshi Nishijima), who accepts a residency at a theater in Hiroshima and is chauffeured around the area by the reticent Misaki (Tōko Miura). During these drives, he reflects on his marriage, trying to better understand his relationship with his wife, the clever screenwriter Oto (Reika Kirishima). Hamaguchi’s storytelling is thoughtful and affecting, and the (admittedly daunting) three-hour runtime coasts by as smoothly as Misaki’s driving.
—Nolan Russell, Executive Assistant
