Drive My Car

Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s sublime and richly complex drama is an adaptation of a Haruki Murakami short story probing the psychological subtleties of love and loss, identity and infidelity. Yusuke Kafuku is a middle aged stage actor and director who travels to Hiroshima to produce a new play for a theatre festival. He is grieving the recent death of his wife, who has left behind a secret. There he meets Misaki, a reticent woman assigned to become his chauffeur. As they spend time together, Kafuku confronts the mystery of his wife that quietly haunts him.

‘In my opinion, fiction is the only kind of lie that society allows to exist, and it’s only allowed to exist because there’s a clear end to it. But in the short period of time before that end arrives, people are allowed to express something real about themselves…[and] something about the inside of a car makes conversation really easy to start. It’s a strange and mysterious space that’s not quite settled because it moves too much — it’s public and private at the same time in a way that defies any clear definition. And so I think the conversations we have in cars arise from the urge to stabilize that space.’

Director Ryūsuke Hamaguchi, from an interview with IndieWire.