Image copyright © by Marcus Trahan

Learning to Drive

(2014)

One of those minor little films that are enjoyable to watch, but I know I’ll have forgotten almost everything about it a year from now. The chief pleasures are the cast. Patricia Clarkson is a New York writer whose husband has just left her. She decides she needs to learn to drive, and hires Ben Kingsley, a Sikh, as an instructor. Through a series of misunderstandings and culture clashes, they learn to like and respect each other. Big surprise. I was deathly afraid they were going to fall in love, which would be ludicrous (he has a pending arranged marriage and he’s okay with it) but they resisted that. Meryl Streep’s daughter, Grace Gummer, plays Clarkson’s daughter.