Probably the most significant disappointment I've had with any film this year has been with "Drive My Car," the highly lauded Japanese film from director Ryusuke Hamaguchi, who had two films released in 2021. The other is his anthology, "The Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy," which I also watched. I've read multiple reviews and articles by Hamaguchi's admirers, detailing why they've connected to his work, but I remain unconvinced. And I figured it was time to write about my stubborn resistance to this newly beloved auteur.
I did like one of the three stories in "The Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy," the finale segment titled "Once Again," where a case of mistaken identity causes two women to spend a pleasant afternoon together and form an unexpected connection. It's intimate and touching, and nicely exemplifies the central theme of chance being a major force in life. The other two stories also center around women. In "Magic (Or Something Less Assuring)," a woman realizes that her best friend has fallen in love with her ex by chance, and wrestles with the possibility of ruining the new relationship out of jealousy and doubt. In "Door Wide Open," a woman tries to seduce a professor as part of a revenge scheme that goes amusingly sideways. In "Magic," the protagonist is frankly rather off-putting. Her interactions with her ex suggest they had a troubled relationship - troubled due to her own manipulative behavior - which she's ultimately able to curb. In "Door Wide Open," the pivotal scene involves the protagonist discussing an erotic passage of the professor's new book with him. In both stories, it's suggested that the central male character is deeply repressed, and both come across as infuriatingly passive compared to the more sexually aggressive women. Both of these stories contain extended scenes of awkward encounters that completely left me cold.
"Drive My Car" was much less aggravating, but it features a similar dynamic. The main character is Yusuke (Hidetoshi Nishijima), an actor and theater director, married to Oto (Reika Kirishima), a television writer. Revelations about Oto send Yusuke on a voyage of discovery, trying to reconcile his image of his wife with the side of herself that she never shared with him. Through interactions with her ex-lover Koshi (Masaki Okada), and his own driver, Misaki (Toko Miura), Yusuke is able to process his feelings in a positive way. During the course of the film, he's also mounting a new multi-language production of Anton Chekov's "Uncle Vanya," and we spend a lot of time with Yusuke in casting and rehearsals. "Drive My Car" is very deliberately paced and its three hour length never feels too slow. But good grief, is it tedious. From the behavior of his female characters, I can't help thinking that the director has major hang-ups about women and sex that he's been trying to address through his filmmaking. All the major relationships in his films are pretty awful and suffocating and rub me the wrong way.
It doesn't help that Yusuke is a pretentious theater director doing Chekhov. I usually love watching artists at work in films, and their process of creating art, but Yusuke's efforts are so stultifying and unengaging. Similar to the professor in "Door Wide Open," who remains stone faced while listening to his own salacious writing being read to him, Yusuke's distance from the material he's trying to engage with is used to show his own disordered mental state. I get the point being made, but it just kills me that Hamaguchi has the audience marinate in that discomfort for such a prolonged amount of time. It certainly didn't do anything for my appreciation of "Uncle Vanya." The narrative does pay off eventually in "Drive My Car," but the process of getting to the resolution didn't endear me to Yusuke at all. And this is a film that clearly wanted me to sympathize and root for Yusuke.
Now, I understand why "Drive My Car" worked for many critics. It's unhurried and thoughtful. John Cassavetes is cited as a major influence on Hamaguchi. Claude Chabrol and Wong Kar-wai are brought up quite a bit too. These are all directors that I admire and appreciate, but I don't love them. The domestic subject matter and the challenging characters that they gravitate towards just don't interest me or work for me a lot of the time. This year in particular has been difficult, with COVID restrictions limiting many filmmakers, and pushing everyone away from certain subjects. I honestly wonder if I would have been more receptive to Hamaguchi's work in a different year, or if I was at a different place in my life. For now, however, his movies just aren't for me.
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