First Love | Little White Lies

First Love

11 Feb 2020 / Released: 14 Feb 2020

Words by Anton Bitel

Directed by Takashi Miike

Starring Becky, Mami Fujioka, and Sakurako Konishi

Two people, a man and a woman, in a warehouse holding a gun.
Two people, a man and a woman, in a warehouse holding a gun.
3

Anticipation.

Love Miike (sometimes).

4

Enjoyment.

Holy... wait... WTF?

4

In Retrospect.

A double-crossing, criss-crossing caper, fatalistic and fun.

A young romance blooms one wild night in Tokyo in direc­tor Takashi Miike’s high-ener­gy caper.

Things are get­ting com­pli­cat­ed,” young, low-rank­ing yakuza Kase (Shōta Sometano) tells cor­rupt­ible police detec­tive Oto­mo (Nao Omori, who you may recog­nise as Ichi from Takashi Miike’s 2003 gore aria, Ichi the Killer) near the begin­ning of First Love.

Gon­do (Seiyo Uchi­no), the boss of Kase’s syn­di­cate, returns from a stint in prison to reas­sume the reins, even though every­one is dis­tract­ed by internecine strife with the Chi­nese Tri­ads. Kase, mean­while, is plot­ting to steal a bag of crys­tal meth from his own peo­ple, and to pin the blame on Mon­i­ca (Saku­rako Kon­ishi), a trau­ma­tised young woman who has been drugged and forced into pros­ti­tu­tion to pay off the debts of her abu­sive father.

Things are about to become a whole lot more com­pli­cat­ed in this Coens-esque clus­ter­fuck of a movie. Unwit­ting­ly intro­duc­ing the chaos is Leo (Masa­ta­ka Kub­o­ta), an up-and-com­ing box­er who, aban­doned as a child, is a love­less lon­er with noth­ing to live for – a sta­tus that is crys­tallised when he is informed that he has a ter­mi­nal brain tumour.

This pas­sion­less pugilist hap­pens upon the dis­traught Mon­i­ca and inad­ver­tent­ly res­cues her from her predica­ment, and so starts a long night of crossed pur­pos­es, unpre­dictable behav­iours and hard-hit­ting encoun­ters, all cul­mi­nat­ing in a mul­ti-aisle tool-store free-for-all where­in heads do indeed roll.

Direct­ed with Miike’s typ­i­cal verve, First Love unfolds a crazi­ly com­pli­cat­ed sto­ry, full of inter­sect­ing, con­tra­dic­to­ry motives and wild­card char­ac­ters – the lat­ter includes venge­ful moll Julie (played by Becky) who does a mean imper­son­ation of the vin­dic­tive Kayako Sae­ki from the Grudge films, and deliv­ers the tone-set­ting line, I want to kill! Every­body, let’s kill!”

Yet it is nev­er hard to fol­low this large ensemble’s over­lap­ping escapades, with edi­tor Aki­ra Kamiya using effec­tive match cuts to link (and par­al­lel) the dif­fer­ent nar­ra­tive tra­jec­to­ries. Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fic­tion is evoked not just by the pulpish nature of the inter­wo­ven sub­plots, but also more specif­i­cal­ly by the pit­ting of a box­er against gangsters.

Leo is the first char­ac­ter we meet in First Love, and the film’s heart and soul, as learn­ing that he will die also teach­es him to live. In dif­fer­ent ways, he and Mon­i­ca are haunt­ed by their pasts – in Monica’s case, the ghost is a recur­ring hal­lu­ci­na­tion of her bespec­ta­cled father dressed ridicu­lous­ly in his under­wear (like the Mino­taur in Miike’s 2003 film, Gozu).

To escape the pris­ons of their pasts, both must fight their way out, whether their oppo­nent is addic­tion, emo­tion­al stag­na­tion or an armed crim­i­nal. Along the way, Miike sly­ly under­mines the stereo­types of the Yakuza as hon­ourable and the Tri­ads as honourless.

The ensu­ing mish­mash of com­e­dy and romance, exis­ten­tial­ism and ultra­vi­o­lence nev­er goes in the direc­tion expect­ed, and plays out its life-and-death themes in deliri­ous­ly car­toon­ish fash­ion – lit­er­al­ly so, in one ani­mat­ed sequence. This is a high-ener­gy caper with lots of larg­er-than-life char­ac­ters cir­cling to kill, and two inno­cents at its cen­tre about whose fate and very sur­vival, against all odds, we are made gen­uine­ly to care.

You might like

Accessibility Settings

Text

Applies the Open Dyslexic font, designed to improve readability for individuals with dyslexia.

Applies a more readable font throughout the website, improving readability.

Underlines links throughout the website, making them easier to distinguish.

Adjusts the font size for improved readability.

Visuals

Reduces animations and disables autoplaying videos across the website, reducing distractions and improving focus.

Reduces the colour saturation throughout the website to create a more soothing visual experience.

Increases the contrast of elements on the website, making text and interface elements easier to distinguish.