Catching up — Best Picture contender 'Drive My Car' and Hulu’s 'Fresh'

The Oscar-nominated Japanese breakout “Drive My Car” shares very little in common with the bait-and-switch Hulu thriller “Fresh” except for one striking creative choice: Both films don’t reveal their opening credits until after the 30-minute mark.

In the case of “Drive My Car,” from director and co-writer Ryusuke Hamaguchi, the opening minutes serve as a vital prologue to the narrative of this engrossing, three-hour character study. The film stars Hidetoshi Nishijima as an acclaimed actor and theater director named Yūsuke Kafuku, who is hired by a theater company in Hiroshima to stage a production of Anton Chekhov’s “Uncle Vanya,” the same show Kafuku performed two years earlier at the time of his wife’s sudden death.

Kafuku’s rehearsal method involves taking long drives and reciting lines alongside an audio recording of his late wife performing the show’s other characters. The theater company won’t allow Kafuku to drive himself, so they hire a young driver (Misaki Watari) to chauffeur Kafuku between his residence and the theater.

What makes “Drive My Car” so magnetic is how Hamaguchi weaves so much of the story’s side characters into what becomes a complex portrait of Kafuku’s state of mind, as well as how artistic choices influence and evolve from his own personal trauma.

Large chunks of “Uncle Vanya” are shown here in various forms (from table readings to Kafuku interacting with the text in his car), and Kafuku’s approach to the material involves every actor speaking their own native language while performing. For example, some actors speak Japanese, another speaks English, while another speaks in Korean sign language. It forces the viewer to not only hone in on the performance of the play, but it also converges thematically with Kafuku’s difficulty communicating with several other characters, including his wife before her death, his driver (who happens to be the same age his only daughter would’ve been had she not died in childhood), and a young actor (Masaki Okada) he casts in “Uncle Vanya” who has mysterious connections to Kafuku’s wife.

A quiet, three-hour meditation on loss may not sound like an enjoyable experience for some, however, Hamaguchi’s delicate approach to character revelations allows the film’s length to be an asset rather than a chore. Its individual scenes are well-manicured mini-stories that present a specific cadence that just isn’t prevalent in many other visual stories, leaving little desire to check the status of its runtime. This particular story requires its entire three-hours.

“Drive My Car” is Oscar nominated for Best Picture, Director, Adapted Screenplay and International Feature (a category it will surely win). It sits comfortably in the upper half of the 10 Best Picture nominees this year. You can stream “Drive My Car” now on HBO Max, rent the film on VOD or check area listings for theatrical exhibition.

“Fresh” a romance-turned-bizarre thriller

While the trailer for “Fresh” basically reveals its devious intentions (avoid it), the opening 30 minutes tells a seemingly innocuous tale of finding love in surprising places. Daisy Edgar-Jones plays Noa, a 20-something fed up with meeting egotistical man-children on online dating sites. When she randomly meets the charming Steve (Marvel veteran Sebastian Stan) in the produce aisle of the grocery store, she lets down her guard and embraces a whirlwind courtship.

The movie’s opening title reveals itself at the onset of a long weekend getaway for the new couple. Turns out, good ol’ Steve has a few secrets.

As “Fresh” veers into body horror territory, both Edgar-Jones and Stan get some meaty scenes together, even while the logic of the film’s various twists don’t hold well against even the slightest scrutiny. Director Mimi Cave and screenwriter Lauryn Kahn do find a few clever ways to dissect the punishing gauntlet of psychological anguish forced on women in the modern dating landscape, though the film’s commentary on the indulgent pleasures of the 1 percent conversely comes out undercooked.

While an uneven effort overall, credit “Fresh” for its big swings, and its ability to drop a late opening title sequence as effectively as that more-acclaimed Oscar contender. “Fresh” is streaming exclusively on Hulu.

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Tyler Wilson is a member of the International Press Academy and has been writing about movies for Inland Northwest publications since 2000, including a regular column in The Press since 2006. He can be reached at [email protected].