What’s black and red all over? A noir-tinged yakuza film by Japanese iconoclast Takashi Miike, of course. With Miike, you never quite know what you’re going to get, both in terms of the movies’ unpredictable content and the wild range in quality. The director’s recent highlights have been the result of a productive collaboration with celebrated British producer Jeremy Thomas: “13 Assassins,” “Hara-kiri: Death of a Samurai” and “Blade of the Immortal.” It’s no surprise then that Miike’s latest Thomas production “First Love“—a selection of the Directors’ Fortnight program at Cannes—finds the filmmaker at his most engaged, playful and coherent. While not quite arriving at the delirious cult highs of a classic like “Ichi the Killer,” “First Love” is Miike’s most accessible work in years.
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The underworld of Tokyo can smell another gang war. In one corner is the yakuza, struggling to modernize as the crime scene goes transnational. In the other are the encroaching Chinese gangs, operating without a code of honor (or at least the yakuza’s code). A dirty cop sees an opportunity to intercept a drug buy and launder the goods himself, thus implicating the yakuza and lighting the fuse. Caught in the middle are Monica (Sakurako Konishi), a meth addict forced into prostitution and Leo (Masataka Kubota), an up-and-coming boxer forced into early retirement when he is diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor. In classic Miike style, carnage ensues.
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The setup of “First Love” is pretty much as convoluted as it sounds, but the film is unusually easy to track in part because of the distinct traits of each character. That’s not to say that each personality is drawn with substance. The women suffer the worst in this male-dominated genre film, either serving as the damsel-in-distress (Monica) or hysterical in their grief—namely Julie (Japanese TV star Becky), a yakuza adjacent who has an ax to grind following the murder of her lover. Leo certainly isn’t credible as a boxer, despite the best efforts of an early montage, and Monica is hardly credible as a meth addict suffering from withdrawal. But there are enough broad details in the characterizations to traverse the mayhem of the set pieces: the Chinese mobster with one arm, the mole in the yakuza, the dirty cop’s bumbling accomplice.
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With so many double and triple-crosses, the moral waters become murky. Who is fighting for a noble cause, who should we identify with, but moreover, does it even matter? Our closest lead is Leo, who takes up a noble cause after street corner fortune teller tells him to “Fight for someone other than yourself.” The drugs function as a plot device with no regard to their real-world impact. We are told that Monica needs a fix to keep hallucinations at bay; she’s haunted throughout the night by the specter of her father, who appears naked except for his eyeglasses and white briefs.
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Miike’s regular composer Kôji Endô returns to provided a bombastic score that sets the tone for a night of riotous bloodshed. Nobuyasu Kita serves as cinematographer—another standby for the Japanese director—and applies an inky wash to the Tokyo cityscape.
The outrageous action sequences in “First Love” earn a great deal of audience goodwill, increasing in complexity until reaching a prolonged climactic crescendo. Fight scenes—often taking place at close quarters—are brutal. The prize for set-piece MVP goes to yakuza mole Kase (Shôta Sometani), who attempts to control the narrative and tidy up loose ends but instead leaves behind an unintentional body count. Each of his unsuspecting victims is dispatched in wildly creative fashion. There’s certainly wicked streak of humor throughout “First Love,” but this recurring gag is undoubtedly its funniest thread.
Budgetary contrasts have driven many of the cinema’s innovations; Miike himself came of age as an emblem of V-cinema, Japan’s direct-to-video market popular throughout the 1990s. Now, most Japanese films are funded by a network of national conglomerates and are forced to cater to the lowest common denominator in order to be profitable. Thomas’ production permits Miike to be more outrageous, but there are still fingerprints of cash-strapped inventiveness, most notably in a creative solution to a car chase that stretches disbelief.
“First Love” peaks early, ultimately wearing out its welcome with a series of false endings. Nevertheless “First Love” is a reminder that Takashi Miike has still got it, shagginess and all. [B]