Drive My Car (2021)

This is based on a short story by Haruki Murakami and somehow the most memorable part of the movie is that the director has managed to capture the same melancholy atmosphere of the author's books and characters themselves. The main character is an actor and theater director Yûsuke Kafuku who has a complicated and not entirely satisfactory relationship with his wife, screenwriter Oto. The creatively gel very well, she preparing him for his acting roles, and she using him to verbally build a story for her next television project. They are enmeshed with each other but not altogether happy. Two years after a personal tragedy laced with unresolved resentment, Yûsuke moves to Hiroshima, a city with its own history of disaster, to put on a new stage version of Anton Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya, performed by actors speaking their respective native tongues. As part of the job, he must agree to have a chauffer, a condition he is reluctant to. Getting behind the wheel of his outdated but beloved car carries importance for him and goiving that up has a lot of sympbolic power. The driver, carrying her own trauma, gains his trust and his ear, and together they work through the things that have been eating at them and not allowing them to move on. This is beautifully rendered, if a bit on the long side.