Saigo no drive

A young woman runs a small company with a married man. She has amorous ties with him as well as business ones. The company is not doing well and the man is thinking about accepting a post elsewhere. To save her business and her affair, the woman resorts to crime: she kidnaps a girl in order to use the ransom to maintain the afflicted company. She keeps her unsuspecting companion in the dark by holding out the prospect of major financial transaction. However she has killed the girl immediately after the kidnap, so no exchange can take place and she is forced to seek another victim.Nagasaki Shunichi - by whom Yoru no stranger, kyofu! / Stranger was screened in Rotterdam last year - could be described as the 'Japanese Chabrol'. Nagasaki shares with the French film-maker a preference for crime stories with a very psychological angle. For instance, The Drive is above all a moving portrait of a woman who desperately resists approaching loneliness. She clings onto the man as a drowning person clings onto a piece of wood. Just how vulnerable they really are is wonderfully illustrated by the moment when they are lying in bed together. When the man - who increasingly disapproves of their relationship - wants to turn away from her, she bites him in the ear. When he turns back, we only see her back. She makes a laughing sound but it could easily be crying. Just how well Nagasaki knows the story he is telling can be deduced from this one shot: we see her slender, immaculate, slightly jerking back longer than necessary. As if he wants to place extra emphasis on her fragility. It is not a major accent and only lasts two or three seconds. This is another similarity between Nagasaki and Chabrol: no large signs but minimal gestures. He usually tells his stories in an inconspicuous almost absent-minded style. Only at an rare moment such as described above do we become aware of the true depth of his drama.