“Drive My Car” (MA) ****

WE don’t get many mainstream narrative movies from Japan. But director Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s adaptation of a short story by Haruki Murakami spends 179 minutes doing something elegant, perceptive and engaging to remedy that lack.

Yusuke Kafuku (Hidetoshi Nishijima) is a talented and successful theatrical director who comes home early one day to find his beloved wife Oto (Reika Kirishima) and a younger man enjoying each other to the max.

Oto dies unexpectedly from natural causes. After about 40 minutes of run time, the film cuts to opening credits with Kafuku, two years later, engaging to produce and direct a multi-lingual season of Chekov’s “Uncle Vanya” in Hiroshima. 

The theatre company tells Kafuku that its insurance policy requires that, as a visitor to the city, he may not drive. The company will provide a skilled driver for him.

This is Misaki Watari (Tôko Miura) who says little for most of the film but whose presence in the story is crucial. She is indeed a skilled driver. Kafuku is not chuffed by her appointment but insists on using his own car, which he has had since new and loves dearly. It’s a brilliant red 15-year-old Swedish two-door tourer. A car to die for. I felt an affinity with his sorrow about missing the satisfaction of using it – I’ve not long acquired something less grand, but no less pleasurable.

One of the actors auditioning for the production is the handsome, callow but only moderately talented Kôshi Takatsuki (Masaki Okada). The last time Yusuke saw him, he was up to the maker’s name in Oto. Yusuke casts Takatsuki as Vanya rather than taking the role himself. Is he exacting tacit revenge on the oblivious younger man, or somehow overlapping their identities? This is only one of the film’s numerous ambiguities. 

One of the play’s female characters is to be played by a young woman who hears well enough but speaks only by signing.

A film that runs for only one minute less than three hours including closing credits has a lot going in and for it. It looks handsome among the re-constructed city and even more so when it goes out to landscapes that I can only describe as delectable. Its dramatic content is subtle and intelligent. The only Japanese word I know is “arigato” but I’m prepared to accept that the translation into its subtitles is of better quality than many.

I don’t like to play the “best” game when evaluating several films against each other. I’m content to rate a film as good, bad or indifferent. But I am happy to note that “Drive My Car” is Japan’s nomination for this year’s foreign-language Oscar for best film.

At Dendy and Palace Electric