Drive My Car is a straightforward story about grief. In another sense, it’s a meta look about how life can take away our innocence in such quick strokes, the blink of an eye really, but if one figures out how to keep going there are more reprieves than we realize. 

This is often highlighted with the story within a story. Hidetoshi Nishijima plays Yûsuke Kafuku, an actor at the height of his career currently starring and directing a production of Uncle Vanya. The production is unique in that its actors speak varied languages (some even simply sign) and deliver their parts in whatever is their native tongue. But it’s evident these actors still react and interact in the moment — something that is not always easy to achieve in real life.  

In Yûsuke’s personal life, he and his wife, Oto (played with delicate intimacy by Reika Kirishima) are very close, yet they’ve also created a cocoon of being wrapped in erotic stories, perhaps to forget the pain of the loss of their child many years before.

Communication, disillusionment, and life being more than simply what meets the eye, are big themes in Drive My Car. The film's writer-director Ryûsuke Hamaguchi also explored the changing waves of intimacy, attraction and communication in his other film Wheel of Fortune, which also came out earlier this year. 

The chemistry between Kirishima and Nishijima jumps off the screen in the first act and Hamaguchi had long wanted them both for the roles of husband and wife.

"In terms of Nishijima, I knew I wanted him from the beginning. I had watched his films from when I was in my 20s and loved a lot of the indies he was in, and thought he’d be great for the character. For his wife, I had seen this movie called Norwegian Wood. I thought she was wonderful and wanted to have her. The sex scenes in this film took a lot of courage, and her courage in turn really inspired and impressed myself and the other actors. We had even more of a responsibility to make the movie that much better to honor her courage.”

Hamaguchi says working with his Uncle Vanya cast sometimes made it necessary to make more time on set for communication, but that the end result was exactly what he was looking for: “I cast more online than from real-life auditions. We had Korean actors, actors from the Philippines, and actors who primarily spoke in sign language. We did have several layers of translation on set and we allowed extra time for that.”

When Oto passes away suddenly and unexpectedly, Yûsuke is left to grapple with secrets he’s just recently discovered of infidelity and pain that Oto never dared show him. Hamaguchi stated that his characters were on a very different journey with their grief.

“All people have secrets that they cannot share even with their closest partner and the miscommunication that is between them stems from their daughter’s death. In Japan, the 17th year after someone dies is called the kite year, and in that scene when they are looking at that photo Kafuku closes his eyes first, and then she closes her eyes and looks at the photo a little longer. They are at a different pace of recovery and are experiencing a different sadness of that tragedy.”

In the wake of a glaucoma diagnosis and in the wave of his wife’s death, Yûsuke is given a driver to get to and from rehearsals of Uncle Vanya. She is young and from far away, but she’s an excellent driver and listener, giving them both a chance to confide in each other and maybe start to slowly heal from their traumas. The intimate scenes are captivating despite the limiting scale of shooting in a car. Hamaguchi relished the car shoots.

“Every shot and set up was a challenge and it would be better for the emotion of the actors and for continuity to shoot faster…but the actors gave a lot of energy to maintaining focus. The crew and I relied on the actors, and it is thanks to them that the car scenes turned out so good.”

There is no doubt that Uncle Vanya deals much with disillusionment and what might have been. Of course, Kafuku’s life also often asks what might have been had his daughter survived, or had his wife lived longer. It could be easy for Kafuku to fall into the endless trap of what might have been, but there is a theme here, too, of what could be when you are open to it. When asked if his characters see more clearly at the end of the film, Hamaguchi replied, “They can definitely hear better… There is definitely this idea that losing a sense or ability is not a complete loss. It can, instead, open up other possibilities; like hearing better.” 

Ultimately, it feels as if Hamaguchi is asking if one can find grace in grief. Oftentimes in this movie he answers the question simply with, one can indeed find it if they are willing to just go for a drive.