“Tokyo Taxi,” the 94-year-old Yoji Yamada’s 91st film, which screened at the recently wrapped Tokyo International Film Festival, could be his swan song, though the director has not announced his retirement.
And why should he? The film, a remake of 2022 French-Belgian drama "Driving Madeleine," is one of the best he’s done in years. Co-scripted by Yamada and Yuzo Asahara, it may have a borrowed storyline — an elderly woman asks a taxi driver to take her to memorable spots in her life before she moves into a retirement home — but the veteran director has put his own inimitable stamp on it. That stamp will be familiar to fans of Yamada’s 48-installment “Tora-san” film series, which followed the misadventures of a wandering tramp played by Kiyoshi Atsumi with a mix of broad comedy and heartwarming drama — Charlie Chaplin’s classic “a laugh and a tear” formula.
But in “Tokyo Taxi,” Yamada’s strong social conscience, seen in his unjustly neglected 1970 masterpiece “Spring Comes Late” and other films about ordinary people struggling to get by, is also evident.
With your current subscription plan you can comment on stories. However, before writing your first comment, please create a display name in the Profile section of your subscriber account page.