Drive Me to the End is a 2020 drama about estranged family members who find themselves car-sharing to a funeral in Scotland.
Here’s a little film with heaps of heart, filmed on a small budget with a cast of names you’ve most likely never heard of. Nonetheless, it’s a smart, touching, and often amusing road trip that hits a number of traditional landmarks we’ve seen before in such stories yet manages to keep it fresh enough to make this something truly special. And that right there is something I don’t say nearly as often as I’d like to about the movies these days.
Ryan (Richard Summers-Calvert) is about to make the two-day drive to Scotland to pay respects to someone he doesn’t really know, but understands (sort of) the importance of attending. He’s got his bags packed and is bidding his mum farewell, which isn’t so easy. She’s terminally ill, living at home with him, and he’s torn between staying with her or taking the trip. On his way out, she reminds him that he’s got to pick up Sunny (Kate Lister), a young woman who’s loosely part of the family though they’ve never met. She’s also on the Autism spectrum. He’s not particularly thrilled by the prospect, but follows through and the two end up on the road together forced to get to know each other (in surprisingly intimate ways), the bluntness between them knocking down walls that reveal much more than they expect.
Written and directed by Summers-Calvert, Drive Me to the End is a contemporary adult study, unfiltered by the conventions of typical romantic dramas, the seemingly gimmicky use of an attractive woman with Autism played out not in the emotional standards the plot seems ultimately crafted to be. Ryan is a decent guy, established early by his tenderness and frustration with his mother and her condition, wanting to do the right thing but thrust into an ordeal he’s not entirely equipped to handle. This leads to sticky situations with a woman he grows unquestionably drawn to.
Sunny’s parents, especially her father, are not sure she’s ready to be alone with a strange man, family or not, but let her go anyway, believing she’ll make the right decisions. Indeed, Ryan wants to learn more about her, and talks frankly about her Autism, wondering how she dates men, feeling that if she were to be with guys like him, they’d be targeted as taking advantage of her. She quickly turns the table on that however, in an oddly erotic and then very funny moment that peels back the hammer on the head storytelling style Summers-Calvert throws at us early in the film. And yeah, I know what you’re thinking. There’s temptation while reading this to believe the film is doing everything wrong with Sunny, but believe me when I tell you, it isn’t.
The tightrope any film like this tiptoes along is of course how it handles the Autism, a thing that many movies tend to mangle, the best of them keeping it about the relationships rather than the consequences. Lister is a talented and effervescent presence on screen, refusing to make Sunny vulnerable because of the character’s disorder, and best of all, the story avoiding all opportunities to make her some sort of savant that pivots the plot (that in itself makes this worthwhile). Instead, she is unable to talk in circles, saying what’s on her mind immediately and without the social complexities that hold most back. This opens doors for some unusual conversations … and moments of challenging personal hurdles. Lister’s performance is subtle and bang on, thump in the chest good.
You think you know what this is about, the relationship between Sunny and Ryan highly transparent but remarkably identifiable, the exploration of the fallibility of human attraction, especially with the demands of who and what Sunny is weighing on every turn. However, there is more to this, or rather refreshingly less, the film concentrated to keep it free of needless secondary plots to exploit the girl’s potentials, or run ins with supporting characters that drive the two into some absurd hairbrained scheme. It is instead just a brief drive that leaves the road open for a young man and young woman to leave behind what they once knew and discover in the company of each other, who they really are.