He is chauffeured around by Misaki Watari (Tôko Miura) in his own red 1987 Saab 900 Turbo. After the passing of his wife Oto (Reika Kirishima), Kafuku encounters his wife’s paramour and junior Kōji Takatsuki (Masaki Okada) in a casting call for a stage play of Anton Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya at a Hiroshima theatre festival. The film essentially follows the life of theatre actor/director Yûsuke Kafuku (Hidetoshi Nishijima). But the answer to what makes the truly film special, however, is something that’s not even a part of it. It’s a ‘European’ movie in Japanese, Mandarin, Korean Sign Language and English – a slow-burn drama that tugs at the heartstrings, but not too hard - a stick Japanese critics use to beat Murakami with. It’s easy to see why the film, now streaming on MUBI, racked up so many accolades. Perhaps Alejandro González Iñárritu’s 2014 Drama Birdman is a more accurate example. Had Ryusuke Hamaguchi not decided to adapt Haruki Murakami’s short story Drive My Car, and picked one of his novels instead – Hard Boiled Wonderland or A Wild Sheep Chase – it would have, perhaps, ended up looking like a David Lynch, Charlie Kaufman or an Ingmar Bergman film.
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