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Canberra Today 19°/21° | Friday, March 29, 2024 | Digital Edition | Crossword & Sudoku

Review / ‘Learning to Drive’ (M)  ***

Learning to DrivePATRICIA Clarkson’s acting chops glow in any role. As Wendy, she plays a character that Sarah Kernochan’s screenplay confronts with a litany of difficulties and other obstacles as she recovers from her husband’s infidelity by learning to drive.

In Isabel Coixet’s film, Wendy is no shrinking violet. She’d even be prepared to take her husband back. But he’s too entangled with his young hotsy-totsy to accept the invite.

In New York, public transport or a partner who drives covers most travel exigencies. Wendy’s daughter lives in rural upstate New York with no commercial transport conveniently located. To visit her, Wendy perforce must get a licence.

Kernochan constructs a neat arrangement whereby Wendy engages Sikh cab-driver Darwan to teach her how to drive. In 1982, Ben Kingsley played Mahatma Gandhi and won an Oscar for it. Here, he plays a refugee with US citizenship, earning a modest living driving a cab. The film takes Darwan and Wendy through an improbable friendship until she gets the coveted licence and he marries a handsome widow whom he first sees outside Immigration at the airport.

The film isn’t free of niggly little moments that might have been better handled, but what low-budget movie is perfect. Neither Clarkson nor Kingsley lets the niggles put them off their stride in an agreeable-enough film.

At Capitol 6 and Palace Electric

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Dougal Macdonald

Dougal Macdonald

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