Tokyo Taxi

With the audience as his passengers, Yoji Yamada’s Tokyo Taxi takes us on a ride of reminiscence and realisation. Our guides are a cabbie and his 85-year-old customer, who helps reframe the troubled driver’s hardships through her own journey through the Japanese capital.

At 94 years old and with an oeuvre of 90 films, Yoji Yamada returns with his latest feature Tokyo Taxi, a reflective offering of a generous life, retold through the rear-view mirror. Koji Usami (Takuya Kimura) is an exhausted taxi driver whose financial hardships are deepened by his talented teenage daughter’s invitation to a prestigious, though expensive, music school. Sumire (Chieko Baisho) is his elderly passenger beginning her journey to a nursing home.

The fare starts out bumpy, but Koji softens as he grows to understand Sumire. They detour through Tokyo as Sumire reflects and farewells the city that has held her whole life. We witness her as a young woman surviving war, experiencing her first love, encountering single motherhood and navigating the societal prejudices she overcame.

Yamada (Tora-san, Wish You Were Here, IFFR 2020) brings us an urban road film, blending tragicomedy with affirming levity. Tokyo Taxi drives us to a poignant place – a preoccupation with what seems straight ahead might distract us from the pleasures of the periphery which make up our lives.

– Olivia Harsan

Trailer

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