This quirky, comedic cross cultural drama, set in New York, concerns a serious, hard working driving instructor who has a second job as a taxi driver and a book reviewer that has just found out her husband is leaving her.
Wendy, who doesn’t drive but who has a grown up daughter, Tasha (Grace Gummer – Meryl Streep’s real life daughter), living on a farm some distance away has never desired to get behind the wheel, but now things are different. So, she decides to take lessons with Darwan. He is not only a good instructor, but a decent and moral person with an abiding respect for tradition, that daily faces the opprobrium associated with being a turban-wearing coloured man in a foreign land. He takes it in his stride, but the more time she spends with Darwan, the more Wendy appreciates his strength and demeanour. While he is not wedded, his sister in India is keen on instigating an arranged marriage with an Indian woman that proposes to fly to the US. When she arrives, she and Darwan have quite some adjusting to do. Meanwhile, given her turn of events, Wendy is fascinated at the thought that Darwan would even contemplate marrying somebody he doesn’t even know.
The screenplay is based upon a story that Katha Pollitt wrote in The New Yorker magazine in July 2002. It was written by Sarah Kernochan, who also wrote Nine and ½ Weeks, Sommersby and What Lies Beneath. Direction is from Isabel Coixet (My Life Without Me, Paris, je t’aime).
Coixet first became involved with Learning to Drive when she was shooting Elegy with Patricia Clarkson and Ben Kingsley eight years ago. Clarkson gave her the script and it moved her deeply because at the time she was going through a separation with her daughter’s father and she didn’t have a driver’s license. The script gave her the strength to move forward and the push she needed to learn to drive. So, it spoke to her on a very personal level. Coixet is also a big fan of Katha Pollitt’s writing and as Coixet puts it “the essay she wrote has become a classic because it has her smart, intelligent and compassionate point of view about love, loss and moving forward in life.”
Learning to Drive the movie has captured the essence of that, even if some elements have been changed for dramatic effect. So, this is a slice of life reality piece with a little piece of magic attached to it. Clarkson’s character, like Kingsley’s, is a hard worker – cultivated, tough, witty and extremely accomplished. But after her world crumbles, she has to learn to be on her own and open herself up to the world.
In turn, when Darwan – this honest, uptight man – teaches Wendy to drive, he starts discovering things about himself and learns to be more flexible and generous. So this is a film about self-discovery, with a theme of “it is never too late for anything”. The contrasts in background and culture are starkly evident and played up to positive effect.
Clarkson and Kingsley are strong as the central characters, even if Clarkson flying off the handle is, at times, a touch overplayed. I liked the feel of the film – it has a positive aura about it. Still, it left me asking the age old question about whether or not a man deeply attracted to a woman can ever only think about that woman in platonic terms?
Rated M, Learning to Drive scores a 7 out of 10.
Director: Isabel Coixet
Cast: Patricia Clarkson, Ben Kingsley, Grace Gummer, Jake Weber
Release Date: 8 October, 2015
Rating: M
Alex First
David Edwards is the editor of The Blurb and a contributor on film and television