Forget misunderstood hacks and generational talents. There’s nothing quite like a consistent studio hand (with a solid 3- or 4-star batting average) who flies under the international radar for much of their career. Yoji Yamada was already approaching middle age (and his 16th feature) by the time Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, but it would take another half-century before international festivals and “contribution to cinema” committees started taking notice. Last year marked both the director’s 94th birthday and the release of his 93rd film, Tokyo Taxi, which enjoyed its European unveiling at a sold-out IFFR screening last Friday evening. The movie is a middlebrow crowdpleaser that’s elevated by two seasoned lead performances—in other words, exactly what it needs to be.
To cinemagoers in Japan, Yamada has been an institution for decades because of Tora-San, a beloved series of comedies that centre on the misadventures of a gormless but lovable protagonist—a character somewhere in the lineage of The Tramp and Messrs Hulot and Bean. The franchise currently sits at around 50 installments (still a Guinness World Record). Almost all were written and directed by Yamada, and almost all of them star Kiyoshi Atsumi, a comedian who died a year before his final performance in the role, which was released posthumously in 1997. Then, 22 years later, Tora-san, Wish You Were Here—a new feature made partially from flashbacks to Atsumi’s 48 performances in the role—was released. Yamada, naturally, directed that one as well.
Tokyo Taxi is a remake of Driving Madeleine, a recent French film about an elderly woman who spends what might be her final Parisian evening recounting wilder years to an initially disinterested but increasingly engaged cabbie. As the title of his latest suggests, Yamada replaces the French capital for his own country’s—swapping out tales of 1968 student protests and the like for his character’s (and perhaps his own) memories of World War II. While we also learn of a first love who turned into an abusive husband, as well as a brief stint in jail, Madeleine‘s sentiment and structure are left mostly intact. Yamada’s cab driver, Koji Usami (Takuya Kimura), has money problems that are about to get worse—his daughter, a cellist, has been accepted into a prestigious music school—and his passenger, Sumire (Chieko Baisho), is en route to a nursing home. As she looks to take a few trips down memory lane, this unlikely duo form a fleeting but meaningful bond.
For those similarities, Tokyo Taxi seems the more valuable of the two. Madeleine‘s director, Christian Carion (an Oscar nominee for Joyeux Noël in 2005), was in his early 60s when he made the film—a fact that goes some way to explaining why Yamada’s take on the material feels more genuine and hard-won, even at its most saccharine. After finishing university in the 1950s, the director got his first job with Shochiku Studios at a time when the legendary company was producing some of the great masterworks of Japanese melodrama—including Tokyo Story and the original The Ballad of Narayama, the latter of which’s director, Keisuke Kinoshita, was said to have taken Yamada under his wing. Tokyo Taxi was developed to celebrate the studio’s 130th anniversary, and while it won’t be coming anywhere near a list of Shochiku’s greatest output, it’s certainly made in a similar spirit.
Casting doesn’t hurt Tokyo Taxi‘s case. Kimura (who appeared in 2046, starred in Blade of the Immortal, and voiced the title role in Howl’s Moving Castle, to name but a few credits) gets top billing and plays Usami with the appropriate shades of reluctant empathy and hangdog disinterest; but the movie wouldn’t be much of anything without Baisho in his back seat. Though the 84-year-old got her debut in Yamada’s Kiri no Hata in 1965, I recognized her more for providing a beating heart to Chie Hayakawa’s Plan 75 a few years ago. Jaunting around Tokyo’s still-endlessly watchable streets, Baisho dives into the role with relish—not least for the way her mind appears to visibly jog to a distant moment in the past when Kôji offers her an arm to link with. There’s nothing in Tokyo Taxi you haven’t seen before and probably little that’ll stick, but it cruises through its 91 minutes with masterful ease.
Tokyo Taxi premiered at the 2026 International Film Festival Rotterdam.