The Drive

This is more restrained and less spectacular than Nagasaki's subversive thriller The Enchantment, but ultimately just as chilling . A divorced single mother (Muroi) is desperate to keep her married lover and business partner (Tamaki). With loan sharks circling, she picks up a schoolgirl, murders her, and tries to extract a ransom from the child's senile grandfather, while enticing her 'innocent' partner into a weekend on the lam. An anguished, misplaced love story, with a wrenching performance from Muroi, and no cop-outs.