LEARNING TO DRIVE (Sarah Kernochan). 90 minutes. Opens Friday (August 28). See listings. Rating: NN
Patricia Clarkson plays a newly single New Yorker who learns to drive – and so much more! – in this movie calibrated to appeal to that precious demographic of middle-aged people who don’t go to see movies any more. The problem is that those of us who do go to see movies have seen a hundred different versions of this one.
Freshly separated, Clarkson’s Upper West Side book critic, Wendy Shields, finally decides to learn to drive, because her cheating husband (Jake Weber) always did it for her. This is a metaphor, just like Wendy’s surname. Luckily, she’s just met Darwan Singh Tur (Ben Kingsley), the world’s most centred driving instructor, whose soothing quasi-spiritual presence will help her rediscover both her agency and her personal power.
Learning To Drive is based on a true story, but screenwriter Sarah Kernochan and director Isabel Coixet have reworked it into the purest life-affirming bullshit, compounded by another of Kingsley’s fussy, late-period look-at-me performances.
I can’t quite agree with some critics who’ve called the performance an ethnic caricature its mannered, hammy tenor is utterly true to the actor giving it. It’s just that he’s doing it with an Indian accent instead of the Brooklyn one he usually puts on for these roles.
