Film Review: First Love
Images courtesy of Little Monster Entertainment.
Perhaps the first movie in a long while that has been able to so accurately capture the ridiculousness and chaos of life, Takashi Miike’s First Love, is able to expertly straddle the worlds of absurdity and darkness, all whilst remaining firmly grounded in reality.
As our gateway into the film’s gritty world of corruption, drugs and crime, Miike chooses Leo (Masataka Kubota), a professional boxer with no real ties to the world, who lives everyday untethered and isolated. Leo’s story begins when he wins another one of his fights, yet afterwards is berated by his trainer for being unable to celebrate his win. Leo is taciturn and insular, seemingly unconnected to the events that take place around him. He is eventually advised that “it would be best if you were able to fight for someone rather than yourself”, someone to shatter the sleepwalking existence which he firmly inhabits, and awaken within him his ability to live, and not simply exist. This someone is Monica (Sakurako Konishi), a woman constantly wide-eyed in terror who in order to pay off her father’s debts, was sold as a prostitute to the deranged criminals Julie and Yasu . Reeling from her past trauma and forever on the verge of a psychotic breakdown due to her drug withdrawals, Miike poses Monica as Leo’s purpose, and even unlikelier, Leo’s saviour.
Running parallel to Leo and Monica’s stories is the grime-infested world of gang violence and organised crime. Yakuza member Kase, played unforgettably by Shota Sometani, kicks off what will eventually mushroom into a manic, white knuckle plot line, when he makes the decision to conspire against his fellow gang members, by attempting to steal a large shipment of crystal meth for himself. Not only is Kase too impulsive to enact such a delicate and discreet plan as this, but it is also evident that he has overestimated the abilities of those he has enlisted to carry out this plan, such as the bumbling cop Otomo, and underestimated those he was attempting to con, including Leo and Monica, who eventually become embroiled in this tangled web of deception and warring Chinese and Japanese gangs.
As Leo tries to save Monica from her past, the pair are eventually taken hostage by Kase and Otomo, who are attempting to frame Monica as the meth thief. It is at this point where the bizarre and disturbing themes we have come to know and love as characteristic of Takashi Miike’s direction completely overtake the film. The audience is suddenly plunged into an outrageous yet comical car chase scene with bullets whirring and meth crystals flying, in a heart pounding sequence that is all the more heightened by a pounding, free jazz soundtrack that emphasises the chaotic vortex occurring onscreen. The madness reaches its climax in a final shootout in a hardware store, where all the major players of the criminal underworld converge to exact their respective revenges. All of the players meet here: Chinese gang members, Yakuza, the unhinged Julie, the drugged out and giddy Kase, Monica, and the now emboldened Leo. Whilst this entire sequence at times verges on slapstick, beneath the hijinks Miike is attempting to make a very real point, highlighting the vast suffering and cruelty humans are able to inflict upon one another in the pursuit of power. Revenge, money, and drugs are the driving forces behind many of the character’s actions, and Miike successfully posits these factors as not only pointless and empty, but dangerous in their ability to spark frenzy and greed in others. Evidently the only solution to this overwhelming issue is the unyielding power of those ordinary people like Leo and Monica, who try to do good in the face of evil, despite the odds.
Amidst the turbulence and wildness, First Love is fundamentally a story of the quiet good and maniacal evil that inheres in the world, with Miike placing the altruistic love that Leo and Monica eventually share, in the middle of it all, acting as a brazen middle finger, held out proudly to the world of hatred and filth that tried to swallow them whole.
First Love is showing in select Australian cinemas from the 27th of May 2021.