The Best of Takashi Miike
“Rainy Dog” (1997)
“The Bird People of China” (1998)
“Audition” (1999)
“Dead or Alive” (1999 plus sequels)
“Happiness of the Katakuris” (2001)
“Visitor Q” (2001)
“Ichi the Killer” (2001)
“13 Assassins” (2010)
"First Love" (playing at Landmark's Ken Cinema through Oct. 10) is a deliberately deceptive title for the latest film from Japan’s prolific filmmaker Takashi Miike.
Miike’s films are not easy to describe because they mash up genres with gleeful abandon. His "Happiness of the Katakuris" even boasted the tag line: "'The Sound of Music' meets Dawn of the Dead.'" With more than a hundred feature directing credits in genres ranging from kiddie superheroes and folklore monsters to comic book adaptations and over the top violence, Miike is hard to pigeonhole. And that's what makes his such a fascinating director. (Check out my NPR interview with the director for some insights.)
His latest film proves to be a kindred spirit to "True Romance" and even boasts a similarly sweet and misleading title of "First Love." Both films have romance at their core but the young lovers exist in a brutal world.
In "First Love," Leo, a boxer jolted out of apathy by a medical diagnosis, and Yuri, a young woman forced into sex work to pay off her father's gambling debt, are thrown together by chance. An unexpected punch wakes both characters out of their numbed existences and throws them into a world of chaos.
As crimes and bodies pile up, Leo and Yuri seem insulated by their innocence or perhaps it's just dumb luck. Leo surprises himself by reaching out to help someone else and Yuri starts to blossom at the suggestion that one person might care about her. But as they engage in an oddly unfolding romance the chaos of yakuzas, corrupt cops, drug dealers, murderers and a heist gone wrong swirls dangerously around them.
Miike has an intoxicating cinematic style and a proclivity for over the top violence. "First Love" indulges in both of these things but with a less serious tone than some of his more recent efforts like "13 Assassins" and "Blade of the Immortal." This film leans more toward the extreme and outlandish world of his "Yakuza Apocalypse."
But Miike is not for everyone. When the real world is filled with so much senseless violence it can be hard to appreciate a film and a filmmaker that revel in uncontrolled bloody action.
But Miike's "First Love" is not of any real world. It exists in a kind of comic book landscape — at one point it literally becomes an animated comic — where the violence is often exaggerated to the point that it becomes darkly comic. Miike depicts a very different kind of violence than "Joker," which opens against it in San Diego Friday. Miike is in control of every frame of his film and his intent is to put a hopeful pair of characters at the eye of a violent storm not of their making. "Joker" filmmaker Todd Phillips, on the other hand, never feels in control of his film and that makes it unclear and perhaps dangerous in how it might be perceived by some.
As a longtime fan of Miike and his audaciously unique talent, I simply can’t help being captivated by his loopy charm and wild energy.
