This is just the start of “First Love”’s nuttiness, its energy not emotionally immediate, just frantic. There’s always an encouraging ambition in any filmmaker throwing so many pieces together, and keeping them all in motion. But even the worst of similarly-designed Coen brothers movies know, for example, that it’s vital to make us care about the most clumsy of dimwits, and that they shouldn’t be merely chainsaws in a juggling act.
Miike hurls audiences into these different scenarios and for the first half or so challenges you to keep track of everyone’s significance, because there’s a big chase later involving everybody—and the Yakuza, the Triads, and the cops. He takes the viewer from one shadowy corner to the next, but the camera’s energy is oddly restrained to that of a quiet spectator, whether it's placed behind some clutter as Kase and Otomo assemble their foolish plan, or sitting on the ground across from Leo and Monica as they start a deeper connection. Setting up all the players, these dialogue-driven scenes at least become a strong indicator of the film's calibrated performances, and Miike’s ability to harness them with crisp editing (one explanation for how he’s amassed more than 100 films in his career).
Yet even as these various zig-zagging plot lines start to intersect, “First Love” amasses less chutzpah than you might expect. Every five minutes or so it’s a sequence of someone trying to get out of a tricky scenario, like when Kase is stuck driving a furious, vengeful Julie, with her being totally unaware Kase was the one who just killed Yasu. Happenstances throughout the story are used like narrative flourishes without greater meaning than to reckon with life’s casual absurdities—it’s funny when a gangster simply gets a leg cramp at probably the worst time in his life, but “First Love” doesn’t do anything else with it. Overt humor instead pokes through with only passing kookiness, like when new characters abruptly enter into the fray, and even sooner meet death.
“First Love” finds its footing in the third act, which takes place in an arena befitting the movie’s chaotic energy of characters being in the wrong place at the wrong time—a massive, labyrinthine hardware store with no (conventional) way out. As Miike bounces between emotional and comical beats, it’s constantly surprising about who is around each corner, and it sometimes leads to a Wild West shootout, or samurai sword duel. Some relief arises with this finale simply because Miike's expansive character roster starts to thin out, and it might even make you wish the film went even more over-the-top, now that there’s no reason for anyone to get out alive.
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