First Love

“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.