Love on Tri­al – first-look review

It’s no secret that the young stars of Japan­ese pop music are held to extreme­ly high stan­dards, both by fans and their labels. The mem­bers of upcom­ing J‑pop band Hap­py Fan­fare are acute­ly aware of what is expect­ed of them, drilled into them con­stant­ly by the suit­ed, seri­ous staff who stand just off to the side dur­ing their per­for­mances and fan sign­ings and tell them every­thing they’re doing wrong. Every moment of their time is account­ed for, and their days are long – they’re expect­ed to attend rehearsals before shows and livestream to their fans after they get home. It’s an awful lot of pres­sure to place on any­one, let alone a group of young women, and the restric­tions extend to their pri­vate lives as well. The girls are con­trac­tu­al­ly for­bid­den from hav­ing boyfriends despite being sex­u­alised by their legions of most­ly male fans, and have very lit­tle free time. Mai (for­mer idol Saito Kyoko) is the most pop­u­lar mem­ber of the group, but there’s stiff com­pe­ti­tion from band­mates, and as the label like to remind them, the rank­ing can change at any time.

Becom­ing increas­ing­ly dis­il­lu­sioned with her restric­tive life, Mai is elat­ed when she runs into an old class­mate, who’s work­ing as a street per­former. Kei (Yuki Kura) shares Mai’s artis­tic incli­na­tions but is both­er lit­er­al­ly and fig­u­ra­tive­ly free (he lives in his van). As the pair become firm friends, they also start to fall in love – at the same time, Hap­py Fan­fare faces back­lash when anoth­er band member’s secret rela­tion­ship with a pop­u­lar livestream­er is dis­cov­ered. Not only does this anger their label, the inci­dent sends their fans into a mael­strom and even threat­ens the girls’ safe­ty. It becomes increas­ing­ly clear to Mai that they’re only of us to the label as a prod­uct, rather than as people.

While the title of Fukada’s dra­ma sug­gests that the film’s focus will be the court case between Mai and her label that stems from her rela­tion­ship with Kei, the major­i­ty of the film actu­al­ly focus­es on the lead-up to this moment, care­ful­ly track­ing the girls as they nav­i­gate their first taste of pop star­dom. The wide angles keep us at the same dis­tance as the fans, but also cre­ate a sense of voyeurism as we linger dur­ing pri­vate moments. The deci­sion to focus on a band at the begin­ning of their star­dom might make them slight­ly more relat­able, and high­light that it’s not just stars at the top of their game who are sub­ject to strict con­tracts, but it does some­what reduce the ten­sion, as it’s unclear how much Mai will lose by walk­ing away from a career she doesn’t seem that wed­ded to in the first place.

It’s cer­tain­ly an intrigu­ing premise for a film, and Kyoko’s per­for­mance is sym­pa­thet­ic and charm­ing, but Love on Tri­al mean­ders along with all the dra­ma of a gen­tle boat ride, nev­er quite kick­ing into gear, and the lack of devel­op­ment afford­ed to the sup­port­ing char­ac­ters reduces Mai’s stu­dio oppo­si­tion to car­toon-like vil­lains. It also feels like Mai and Kei’s rela­tion­ship takes a back­seat once they final­ly get togeth­er, but with­out much explo­ration of how Mai’s court case impacts them beyond sud­den finan­cial wor­ries. It’s a sto­ry with a lot of poten­tial, but this iter­a­tion nev­er quite brings the dra­ma in the way JPop stars them­selves know how to.