Learning to Drive ***½ (2014, Patricia Clarkson, Ben Kingsley, Grace Gummer, Jake Weber, Sarita Choudhury) – Movie Review

Patricia Clarkson and Ben Kingsley are the driving forces behind director Isabel Coixet’s diverting and attractive romantic comedy drama. I hope they don’t mind me calling them old pros, it’s meant to be a real compliment. The two old pros are the making of this movie, they couldn’t be better, and they are the reason to see it. Two of the best screen actors around, they offer exquisite performances in a modest, though very likeable movie.

Clarkson plays a self-absorbed words-mad and book-mad Manhattan writer and book critic called Wendy, whose marriage to unfaithful Ted (Jake Weber) collapses. She is stunned by the unexpected sudden end of her marriage to a man she relied on – if only for for driving. How could a woman as independent as Wendy allow herself not to drive?

Now she is visited by her daughter Tasha (Grace Gummer), who has relationship troubles of her own, but she lives miles away and she can’t drive out to see her.

After a chance encounter with Sikh Indian cabbie and driving instructor Darwan (Kingsley), she agrees to take driving lessons from him. Darwan watches with alarmed fascination as his pupil falls apart. But it turns out he has relationship troubles of his own, too, after he goes ahead with an arranged marriage to a woman he has never met, the withdrawn Jasleen (Sarita Choudhury), who speaks little English and can’t integrate into America.

Wendy’s long-practised, rather smug, composure and well-built sense of order are rocked by throwing herself into the chaos of driving in the big city, and by putting herself in the hands of Darwan. She momentarily lets herself slip out of her comfort zone. Now, anything could happen. She may be at the steering wheel, but he’s on the brakes. Nevertheless, she soon manages to crash the car. It’s the start of a beautiful, if unlikely friendship.

The film is basically a two-hander, with its main fault in not giving properly constructed roles to the few other characters. Weber, Gummer, Choudhury and Avi Nash do their best to flesh it out, and they are good, but they haven’t really got enough decent dialogue or screen time.

So it’s all up to Clarkson and Kingsley, and they know exactly what to do, thrilled, no doubt, to be in a movie that is all about them for once, with some great witty bantering dialogue for them to chew over. Showing ideal screen chemistry, they are warm and engaged, and engaging. An hour and a half in their company proves congenial, and too short.

Isabel Coixet is known for My Life Without Me (2003), The Secret Life of Words (2005), Paris, je t’aime (2006) and Elegy (2008). Clarkson and Kinsgley approached Coixet with the Learning to Drive screenplay after the three collaborated on Elegy.

© Derek Winnert 2016 Movie Review

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