Oto's Strange Tale — The Weight of Repression
and Unspoken Truths
A dimly lit bedroom at dawn. A woman sits astride a man, her face half-hidden in shadow as she speaks softly. This is Oto and the man beside her is her husband, Yusuke. She begins to whisper an uncanny, erotic tale after their lovemaking.
The tale is about a high school girl who repeatedly sneaks into the bedroom of her crush — a boy named Yamaga. Each time the girl leaves something of hers behind and takes one of Yamaga's belongings. Though tempted, she never acts on her desire, held back by a bizarre belief rooted in a past life. Oto says the girl was once a "noble lamprey" fish that refused to feed off others and starved.
A bedroom at dawn. Oto speaks softly in shadow after lovemaking — a trance-like confession disguised as make-believe.
Dir. Ryusuke Hamaguchi · Drive My Car (2021) · Cinematography: Hidetoshi Shinomiya
This surreal detail sets the tone: the story sounds intimate yet strange, mixing sexuality with guilt and restraint. Oto's soft voice delivers the tale like a trance-like confession, while Yusuke listens in silence — occasionally prompting her with gentle questions, as if to fuel this post-coital storytelling ritual.
There's an eerie magic in this scene — a wife baring her soul not through direct confession, but through fiction. It's as if the deepest truths between them can only surface in these vulnerable twilight moments, disguised as make-believe.
In Oto's fragile mental state, storytelling is survival. After the death of their daughter from pneumonia, Oto lost her creative voice entirely — she could no longer write her screenplays. Only with time did stories begin to resurface in her mind, and even then they emerged exclusively during sex, as if physical closeness unlocked her storytelling again.
Oto would narrate these ideas after lovemaking and then forget them by morning, almost as if the stories were coming from a subconscious place of pain. In this way, creativity and sexuality became intertwined as her coping mechanism. Storytelling, for Oto, is like a pressure valve for grief: a way to give shape to her trauma without confronting it outright.
Morning light. Yusuke repeats the story back to Oto — she has already forgotten it.
The noble lamprey — a creature that refused to feed off others, and starved rather than violate.
Why a Lamprey?
The lamprey is parasitic by nature — it survives by attaching to other creatures. But Oto's character refuses that instinct. The girl will not take what she desires — not intimacy, not release, not comfort. She punishes herself with hunger.
The implication is powerful: Oto, like the lamprey, chooses emotional starvation over violation. She longs for connection, but guilt and loss keep her detached. She needs something — maybe forgiveness, maybe self-understanding — but refuses to "feed" on those around her.
And Yusuke? He listens again in silence. He doesn't ask about the metaphor. He doesn't press. Instead, he absorbs her pain without challenging it — a passive witness to her unraveling. This moment captures the central tragedy of their marriage: a haunting dance of intimacy and evasion. They share bodies. They share stories. But not their truths.
Yusuke alone in his cherry-red Saab — listening to Oto's voice on cassette, practising lines, keeping her present.
The Saab becomes the film's central visual metaphor — a vessel of grief, memory, and the illusion of control.
The Glaucoma — A Literal Blind Spot
Soon after, Yusuke is diagnosed with glaucoma in his left eye — a literal blind spot. It's not just medical. It's metaphor. He never truly saw Oto. He turned away from confrontation, and in doing so, missed the chance to really know her.
Tragically, Yusuke's avoidance of conflict costs him the chance to truly understand his wife. Oto dies suddenly of a brain hemorrhage, taking her secrets with her. She had hinted one morning that she needed to tell him something important — perhaps a confession or a goodbye — but fate intervened before she could say the words.
Then there's the unfinished story. Koji, Oto's last lover, eventually reveals its ending in the safety of the red Saab: a schoolgirl stabs a burglar in the left eye. The left eye. Oto's fiction knew something Yusuke refused to see. It's as if she aimed her story at the very eye he was going blind in.
The Red Saab
and Misaki
His car, a cherry-red Saab 900, becomes a temple. A place where he listens to Oto's voice reciting lines from Uncle Vanya, looping endlessly on a cassette. The vehicle is a cocoon — a capsule of memory. And for a long time, it lets him remain unmoved.
The red Saab 900 — a single bright object in a colourless world, moving through Hiroshima like a wound that refuses to close.
The red Saab — the film's central visual metaphor. A vessel of memory, grief, and surrendered control.
But when a theater festival in Hiroshima insists on assigning him a driver due to his condition, the unthinkable happens — he has to hand over control. This isn't just a logistical necessity. It's the inciting incident. He no longer drives; he is driven.
Enter Misaki Watari, a 23-year-old woman with her own demons and silences. She becomes his driver. But more importantly, she becomes his witness. Misaki is reserved, even icy at first. But she watches, listens, and waits. She never forces conversation. Instead, their connection unfolds in shared silences.
Misaki grew up with an abusive mother in a remote Hokkaido village. One night, a landslide destroyed their home — and Misaki failed to save her mother, barely escaping herself. She shoulders a deep burden of guilt and regret, unable to mourn or move on.
Misaki at the wheel — steady, silent, watching. A 23-year-old carrying something she cannot name.
Interior of the Saab at night. Two people, barely speaking. Oto's voice filling the silence between them.
She hides her pain behind a stoic, dutiful exterior — much like Yusuke does. Unable to mourn or forgive fully, Misaki has been stuck in a state of melancholy stasis, just going through the motions of life.
In one unforgettable scene, they return to the snowy ruins of Misaki's childhood home. It is there, in the frozen silence, that Yusuke finally breaks down. He weeps. And Misaki holds him — not as a daughter, not as a lover, but as a fellow mourner. For the first time, he lets someone see him.
Hokkaido in winter. The ruins of Misaki's childhood home. Two people weeping in the snow — finally, fully seen by another human being.
The journey to Hokkaido — where silence finally becomes language between two grieving people.
Uncle Vanya —
A Mirror to Life
At the center of Drive My Car is the play within the film: Anton Chekhov's Uncle Vanya. Yusuke travels to Hiroshima to mount an ambitious, multilingual staging of this classic drama, and the choice of play is no coincidence.
Uncle Vanya becomes a metaphorical mirror, reflecting the characters' inner lives and amplifying the film's themes of wasted time, loneliness, and the longing for catharsis. Yusuke himself had a long history with Uncle Vanya — it was a role he used to perform. But now, still raw from Oto's death, he pointedly refuses to play Vanya on stage.
The rehearsal stage — a multilingual cast performing Chekhov across languages. Japanese, Mandarin, Korean Sign Language. Emotion transcending every barrier.
The multilingual production of Uncle Vanya — where true emotion transcends language entirely.
Instead, Yusuke casts Koji — Oto's last lover — in the lead role. Why? Yusuke confides that Uncle Vanya resonates too close to home. To perform Vanya would be to stare into a mirror of his own sorrow. So he distances himself, letting Koji carry that burden. It's a subtle form of confrontation by proxy.
Yusuke's production features a diverse cast speaking multiple languages — Japanese, English, Mandarin, Korean, and Korean Sign Language. True emotion, the film insists, transcends language entirely. The audience weeps without needing a translation.
Koji on stage as Vanya — performing the grief that Yusuke cannot yet face in himself.
The deaf actress signs Sonya's final monologue in silence. The audience understands everything.
Near the end of Drive My Car, Yusuke echoes Chekhov's own sentiment. Standing in the snow with Misaki, having finally shared their most painful truths, he says gently: "Those who survive keep thinking about the dead in one way or another… You and I must keep living like that. We must keep on living. We'll be okay."
By the film's climax, circumstances force Yusuke to step into the role of Vanya on stage. When he finally delivers Sonya's monologue in the actual performance, it's a deeply cathartic act — he is baring his soul under the guise of a character. The play about a man who must learn to live with regret helps Yusuke do exactly that.
Silence, Communication
and Performance
One of the most striking aspects of Drive My Car is how much is conveyed in silence. Long stretches of the film simply show Yusuke and Misaki driving in the Saab, barely speaking. These quiet interludes are not empty; they are filled with unspoken understanding.
The long drives through Hiroshima at night — Oto's voice on the cassette, two strangers becoming something else entirely in shared silence.
The long drives — where the most important conversations happen without a single word spoken.
In fact, silence itself becomes a language between them. Misaki is not one for small talk, but in the gentle quiet of shared car rides, she and Yusuke develop a trust that goes beyond words. The film suggests that sometimes words are insufficient — and only in silence can two people feel each other's truth.
It's a beautiful contrast to the earlier part of the film where Yusuke and Oto talked often — stories, car practice, Skype calls — yet never truly said what mattered. They were constantly communicating, yet never really communicating.
Yusuke is an actor by profession, and in the wake of Oto's betrayal and death, he essentially continues acting in his personal life — performing the role of the unflappable stoic. Oto too was "acting" in a sense: playing the part of a faithful wife while concealing her affairs and depression. Throughout Drive My Car, there's a blurred line between acting and authenticity.
But true healing begins when the performances stop. In Hiroshima, Yusuke gradually drops his guard with Misaki — he allows himself to be just a grieving man, not a "director" or a "husband who has it all together." Misaki, who has been stone-faced and professional, breaks down in tears as she recounts her mother's abuse, shedding the tough front she has maintained.
The epilogue — Misaki driving the red Saab alone, somewhere new, a gentle smile on her face. Grief carried, not resolved. Life, like the road, stretches on.
The epilogue — Misaki driving the red Saab alone. Grief carried forward, not left behind.
In a quiet epilogue, we see Misaki some time later, driving Yusuke's red car by herself with a gentle smile on her face. It's an image of earned serenity. Life, like the road, stretches on.
Drive My Car leaves us with an enduring message: only by confronting our inner truths and opening our hearts — no matter how painful — can we finally move forward, arm in arm with our ghosts, into whatever tomorrow brings.
We almost never say what we mean. Oto tells erotic fairy tales. Yusuke conducts Uncle Vanya rehearsals. Both are communicating — about grief, guilt, love — through something else entirely. Write dialogue that circles the real subject.
The most important exchange in the film happens without words, in a snowy field in Hokkaido. Ask yourself: what scene in your script could be emptied of dialogue entirely, and become more powerful for it?
The red Saab is not a car — it is a container of grief, memory, and control. The cassette tape of Oto's voice is not a prop — it is the marriage. Give your characters objects that carry their emotional weight.
Koji doesn't threaten Yusuke physically — he reflects him. The man who slept with Oto is cast as Uncle Vanya, the role Yusuke cannot play. The most powerful antagonists reveal what the protagonist has been hiding from themselves.
Don't write grief as sadness. Write it as rigidity, overwork, displacement, compulsive routine. Yusuke listens to his dead wife's voice on a cassette tape while driving to the theater every day. That is grief. That is character.
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