Fantastic Fest Review: First Love

First love can means different things. That boy you went to school with when you were young, who always was prince charming to rescue you from your cruel life at home. That sport you’ve trained for your entire life, only to feel burn out just when you get pegged for major success. In the case of First Love, it’s both of those things, and much more.

First Love, the blood splattered latest from prolific auteur Takashi Miike, opens hard with Leo (Masataka Kubota), a boxer who is down and out about his craft, and falls into a deeper stupor when a doctor tells him a deadly tumor has lodged itself in his brain. On the other side, there’s Monica (Sakurako Konishi), a sex worker who has been forced into the trade to pay off her father’s debts. She gets high to block visions of her father’s ghost that haunts her in bed sheet and underwear. Masa Nakamura’s (frequent collaborator of Miike’s) script brings these two lost souls together in a convoluted but hilarious police sting gone wrong that pits a yakuza clan and a group of Chinese gangsters together.

Miike’s latest is an outrageous romp that manages to find new and exciting ways to depict extreme violence (something Miike is quite skilled in visually) while also cherishing every character so their final breaths feel earned. It’s incredible that, in a movie where toy dogs light bombs and limbs get lopped off, the story has so much sincerity woven into it. Miike’s balancing act depicts him as a man who is effortlessly comfortable with his craft, and with over 100 movies under his belt it’s no surprise.

While vibrant and energetic Miike is certainly a blast, it can feel underwhelming when you know somewhere out there this was the same man who made the visceral and disturbed Visitor Q and the bone chilling Audition. Despite all this, First Love is warm and tender like, well, a first love.

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First Love

U.S. Premiere
Thu., Sept. 26.