Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s Drive My Car is not a film that hurries. It lingers in the silence between words, in the weight of unspoken regrets, in the way a face betrays emotions its owner refuses to voice. Adapted from Haruki Murakami’s short story, this three-hour meditation on love, loss, and the stories we tell ourselves unfolds with the patience of a long drive through fog slow, deliberate, and achingly beautiful.

At its heart is Y?suke Kafuku (Hidetoshi Nishijima), a theater actor and director still reeling from the sudden death of his wife, Oto (Reika Kirishima). Two years later, he accepts a residency in Hiroshima to direct a multilingual production of Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya, a play he knows intimately, having once recorded the entire script for his wife to study. The choice of Vanya is no accident its themes of longing and missed chances mirror Y?suke’s own life with painful precision.

The film’s brilliance lies in its restraint. Hamaguchi refuses to indulge in melodrama, instead letting grief unfold in quiet gestures: the way Y?suke listens to his wife’s voice on cassette tapes as he drives, or how he stiffens when confronted with Takatsuki (Masaki Okada), a young actor who may have been Oto’s lover. The introduction of Misaki (T?ko Miura), the reserved young woman assigned as his chauffeur (a requirement of the residency), becomes the film’s emotional anchor. Their relationship, built in shared silence and the rhythm of the road, is one of the most tender and understated bonds in recent cinema.

The car itself a sleek red Saab 900 becomes a sanctuary, a moving confessional where truths are finally spoken. Cinematographer Hidetoshi Shinomiya frames these drives with hypnotic stillness, the world outside blurring as the characters inch toward vulnerability. The film’s most powerful moments happen not in dialogue but in the spaces between a glance, a sigh, a hand hesitating over the gearshift.

If there’s a flaw, it’s that the film’s deliberate pacing may test some viewers. The lengthy rehearsals of Uncle Vanya, while thematically resonant, occasionally feel like an echo of the film’s own contemplative rhythm. Yet even these scenes serve a purpose, revealing how art becomes both an escape and a mirror for those who create it.

Drive My Car is a masterpiece of emotional precision. Nishijima’s performance is a study in controlled sorrow, while Miura’s Misaki is a revelation her guarded demeanor masking depths of pain that unravel with devastating subtlety. By the time the film reaches its quiet, transcendent conclusion, it’s clear that Hamaguchi has crafted something rare: a story about healing that never offers easy answers, only the hard, necessary work of moving forward.