Tokyo Taxi is a sentimental but moving ride through Japan’s post-war history

Tokyo Taxi (NC16)

103 minutes, opens on Dec 4
★★★★☆

The story: Taxi driver Koji Usami (Takuya Kimura) lives frugally with wife Kaoru (Yuka) and daughter Nana (Runa Nakashima) in Tokyo. His cab is hired by 85-year-old Sumire Takano (Chieko Baisho) for a ride to a nursing home outside the city, where she is to spend the rest of her life. Moved by pity, Koji agrees to make detours to places that have been significant in her life.

Koji is a proud man. He is an owner-operator and, therefore, a cut above drivers who rent their taxis, he reminds people. His passenger, the elderly Sumire, appears to be equally standoffish.

As the movie unfolds, the two people, far apart in age and motivation, move closer.

This adaptation of the French-Belgian film Driving Madeleine (2022) is a study of an ordinary Japanese woman who has lived through an extraordinary period. Sumire has felt the final spasms of World War II, Japan’s post-war reconstruction and economic boom, and the rise of the women’s rights movement.

Tokyo Taxi’s format is the road movie, but the tone is nostalgic and melodramatic. After Sumire emotionally blackmails Koji into touring Tokyo’s streets, bridges and parks that are meaningful to her, the film flashes back to a younger Sumire (played by Yu Aoi).

This is where the gentle stroll down memory lane gets decidedly overwrought. The young Sumire, as they say, has been through some stuff.

It is clear that 94-year-old director and co-writer Yoji Yamada (the Samurai Trilogy, 2002 to 2006) is framing her as an everywoman who has seen the best and worst of Japanese society. The tonal shifts that go from zero to 100 are engaging, in a television drama sort of way. There is a lost-love arc, a revenge arc and a shattered-family arc intended to evoke tears.

Unlike Forrest Gump (1994), who, like Sumire, took viewers time-travelling, she is far removed from the centres of power, so is even more like the metaphorical feather whipped about by the wind.

Yamada, who began his career in 1961 and has 91 films to his credit, never lets it get away from him. Moments of high tension set in the past are artfully contrasted with the present day, giving viewers time to breathe and prepare for the next part of Sumire’s roller-coaster life.

Like Yamada, veteran actress Baisho, 84, is in her prime. She is a compelling presence as the woman whose icy facade melts into vulnerability over the taxi ride. Over a long career, she has voiced anime (Howl’s Moving Castle, 2004) and acted in dramas like Plan 75 (2022).

The feel-good payoff at Tokyo Taxi’s conclusion carries a whiff of artificial sweetener, but such is the goodwill earned by Yamada’s directing and Baisho’s powerhouse performance that it can be overlooked.

Hot take: This occasionally overwrought but well-crafted melodrama is elevated by the twin pillars of Yamada and Baisho.