By 
Watched Mar 20, 2022
Drive My Car is a 3 hour-long Foreign film set in Japan about a man who is a stage Actor/Producer who learns that his wife has been having affairs right before she dies. His wife was responsible for writing the stories for his plays and his routine to memorize the lines is to listen to the audio of the play while he’s driving in his car. About 2 years after the death of his wife he is tasked with traveling to Hiroshima in order to put on a production and screen and hire actors. He requests that his hotel is at least an hour away in order listen to the audio each day on his drive. However, the company who hired him doesn’t allow him to drive his car for safety reason, and they employ a 23 year old woman to drive him around in his own car. Both he and the driver form a bond over death as she also lost her mother at an early age.
I watched this film only because it was nominated for Best Picture at the 2022 Oscars. I was hoping it was going to be this years “Parasite”, but unfortunately it was not. I found the film to be overtly long and pretentious. Nothing really happens for 3 hours that is memorable or noteworthy in my opinion. Half of the film is either set in the car while he listens to audio and the other half of the film is him and the cast sitting around a round table reading scripts. I might have gone a little easier on the film had the runtime been a respectable 2 hours, but this film is at least an hour too log in my opinion. Definitely not something I would revisit.
