First Love

A young boxer is diagnosed with a brain tumour and, that same night, falls into the middle of a yakuza plan to move drugs. He rescues a girl, and across a single night in Tokyo they are chased by a Chinese gang, a corrupt policeman and a furious woman enforcer. The film is not interested in action. It is interested in the indifference of a man who is going to die: someone with nothing left to lose moves without fear for the first time, and the love of the title is built out of that. The form is a genre mixture: gangster film, romantic comedy and slapstick can stand side by side in one scene. Takashi Miike's habit of using violence and humour at the same moment applies here too, and at one point animation cuts in. Miike is an extremely prolific director, and this is an example of how easily he moves inside genre. The film screened in Directors' Fortnight at Cannes in 2019. Masataka Kubota plays the boxer and Sakurako Konishi the girl, with Nao Omori and Shota Sometani in the cast. Who it is for: viewers who like Japanese crime cinema, black comedy and genre blends. Who it is not for: anyone avoiding bloody violence. The film is unembarrassed about severed limbs and bullets, and its tone is deliberately unstable.