Drive My Car

Theater director Yusuke Kafuku, still grappling with the loss of his wife, accepts a three-month residency in Hiroshima to direct a multilingual production of Chekhov's Uncle Vanya with actors speaking different languages. He is assigned Misaki Watari, a quiet young woman carrying her own unresolved pain, as his driver. Ryusuke Hamaguchi adapts Haruki Murakami's work into three hours of cinema that win an Oscar and transform perceptions of what Japanese auteur cinema can achieve.

Drive My Car is contemplative cinema in the purest sense: three hours that never feel long, because every conversation inside the car reveals something meaningful. Hamaguchi adapts Murakami with intelligence, and Chekhov serves as a third audio track.