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Drive My Car-Film Review

Learning About Loss

Aslynn Roe 🐈
3 min readMar 26, 2022

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car driving on highway into a beautiful sunset
Photo credit Taras Makarenko

Sometimes road trips feel endless, and when you finally reach the destination, you realize it was worth the trip. Loss, grief and unsaid words can be the same as we slog through these emotions. Hence the long unfolding of this story. Drive My Car is not a film to be forgotten anytime soon.

This film is based on a short story, but the subtitled movie is vast and expanding in its runtime of 2 hours and 59 minutes. It has earned the nominations for Best Adapted Screenplay and Best International Feature Film. It is nominated for Best Picture and Best Director (Rysuke Hamaguchi), but it has very strong competition in these categories.

The loss of a child is impossible to face and for a mother, devastating. Oto (Reika Kirishima) and Kafuku (Hidetoshi Nishijima) have lost their daughter and both of them are unable to function. Oto is a scriptwriter who has lost her words. Kafuku is an actor and director who has become numb. Both of them need a change in their lives, but it comes with a heavy cost when also Oto dies suddenly.

The next time we see Kafuku, it is two years later and he is trying to find a new life, redemption and himself. He is producing a new play in Hiroshima and has hired an actor, Kôshi Takatsuki (Masaki Okada). We have seen this actor before as…

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Aslynn Roe 🐈
Aslynn Roe 🐈

Written by Aslynn Roe 🐈

I am a listener of culture, history, media, and politics. Follow me, and we will go somewhere. Finding out where is half the fun!

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