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Patricia Clarkson sparkles in a rare lead role
BMovies starring actresses with a trace of gray in their hair who aren’t named Meryl Streep or Julianne Moore are quite rare today. So are movies about serious platonic relationships between heterosexual couples. So, Learning to Drive provides some seldom-seen delights for viewers interested in more serious, well-written fare.
The movie’s platonic couple are Wendy (Patricia Clarkson) and Darwan (Ben Kingsley). She’s a writer and literary critic in New York whose husband of some 20 years (Jake Weber) has just left her for a younger woman. He’s a Sikh driving instructor and taxi driver, granted political asylum in the U.S. so he can’t return to his native India, even for a visit. What starts as an effort to get some order in her life and simply a part of his job winds up blossoming into a real friendship.
Learning to Drive is a small, rather brief movie that is content to have its characters take small steps rather than solve all their life problems in less than 90 minutes. Clarkson is particularly radiant here, but the film makes it clear that radiance wasn’t always on display during her marriage. Kingsley has mastered this dignified sage role, but his Darwan too has a dark side, a temper and imperiousness that shows in his relation with his new wife (Sarita Choudhury), the product of a marriage arranged by his mother. For a movie this short, Learning to Drive never seems rushed. Instead, the script lets the relationship between Wendy and Darwan develop naturally. In part that’s because the script requires them to spend considerable time two feet apart in the confines of a car, a situation that encourages eventually revealing confidences to one another. Also, director Isabel Coixet wisely decides not to waste time with lame attempts at supposedly funny, bad driving set pieces. Even so, by the end of Learning to Drive, viewers feel they want to see more of Wendy and Darwan than the film allows. But Learning to Drive is a movie about minor accomplishments, and a successful film of that nature is actually a major accomplishment nowadays.
Continue reading on Learning to Drive: Mini-review
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