First Love is a 2019 crime thriller film directed by Takashi Miike. It tells the story of a boxer and a call girl who become unwittingly involved in a drug-smuggling scheme. The film premiered on 17 May 2019 in the Directors' Fortnight section at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival, before being released in theaters in the UK and Japan in early 2020.
Plot
A young boxer Leo was abandoned as a child and has no family. He works at a Chinese restaurant in Kabukichō, Tokyo as his day job. After losing a match, he is told by a doctor that he suffers a brain tumor. To pay off her abusive father's debts, a young girl Yuri, who uses the pseudonym Monica, is forced to be a call girl and a drug addict. She sometimes sees hallucinations of her father and her estranged former classmate. She is trapped by a yakuza Yasu and his girlfriend Julie in an apartment, which is used as one of the drug dealing hubs. A yakuza Kase and a corrupt cop Ōtomo plan a drug-smuggling scheme. One night, Ōtomo takes Yuri out of the apartment. When she tries to run away from Ōtomo and a hallucination of her father, she encounters with Leo on the street. Leo hits Ōtomo in the face and decides to help Yuri. Kase goes to the apartment and steals the drugs, but he accidentally kills Yasu in the process. Kase makes a Chinese triad man abduct Julie to stop her for a while. Julie kills the man and goes back to the apartment, learning that Yasu was killed by someone. Assuming that the Chinese triad stole the drugs and abducted Yuri, an old-school yakuza Gondō goes out with his colleagues to find Yuri. Around the same time, Chiachi, who is a female member of the Chinese triad, and her colleagues are also sent to find Yuri. Kase and Ōtomo find Leo and Yuri and capture them. The four are attacked by both the yakuza and the Chinese triad. Multiple killings occur in a deserted warehouse store. There, Leo has a phone call from a doctor and learns that he does not have any illness. With the help from Gondō and Chiachi, Leo and Yuri succeed to escape from the store. Leo continues to pursue his career as a boxer and Yuri struggles to overcome drug addiction in a hospital. On a snowy day, the two enter an apartment together.
On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 97% based on 103 reviews, and an average rating of 7.7/10. The website s critical consensus reads, "First Loves blend of violence, comedy, and romance might seem disparate -- but for director Takashi Miike, it's just another wildly entertaining entry in a filmography full of them." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 77 out of 100, based on 24 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Mike D Angelo of The A.V. Club gave the film a grade of B+, writing, "First Love ranks among Miike's most purely entertaining movies, gradually building steam until it reaches a sustained pitch of cheerful insanity." Stephen Dalton of The Hollywood Reporter commented that "the Tarantino-style rollercoaster ride is as effortlessly enjoyable as ever, accentuating the director's lighter comic leanings over his bloodthirsty side." David Ehrlich of IndieWire praised Shota Sometani's performance, stating, "Sometani is particularly brilliant as the yakuza screw-up who never misses a chance to scratch off one of his enemies and climb a rung on the ladder, even if he seems to sink lower with every decision he makes."
