103 minutes, opens on Dec 4★★★★☆

The story: Taxi driver Koji Usami (Takuya Kimura) lives frugally with wife Kaoru (Yuka) and daughter Nana (Runa Nakashima) in Tokyo. His cab is hired by 85-year-old Sumire Takano (Chieko Baisho) for a ride to a nursing home outside the city, where she is to spend the rest of her life. Moved by pity, Koji agrees to make detours to places that have been significant in her life.

Koji is a proud man. He is an owner-operator and, therefore, a cut above drivers who rent their taxis, he reminds people. His passenger, the elderly Sumire, appears to be equally standoffish.

As the movie unfolds, the two people, far apart in age and motivation, move closer.

This adaptation of the French-Belgian film Driving Madeleine (2022) is a study of an ordinary Japanese woman who has lived through an extraordinary period. Sumire has felt the final spasms of World War II, Japan’s post-war reconstruction and economic boom, and the rise of the women’s rights movement.

Tokyo Taxi’s format is the road movie, but the tone is nostalgic and melodramatic. After Sumire emotionally blackmails Koji into touring Tokyo’s streets, bridges and parks that are meaningful to her, the film flashes back to a younger Sumire (played by Yu Aoi).

This is where the gentle stroll down memory lane gets decidedly overwrought. The young Sumire, as they say, has been through some stuff.