As the title of Takashi Miike’s latest film spells out, there’s a budding relationship at the heart of First Love—a tender, tentative romance between Leo (Masataka Kubota), a boxer with a brain tumor, and Monica (Sakurako Konishi), a young, drug-addicted woman forced into prostitution to pay off the debts of her abusive father. And as it progresses, First Love follows the traditional beats of a cinematic love story, starting with a meet-cute and ending with a happily ever after.
But this is a Miike movie, after all, so that’s not all there is: In and around Leo and Monica’s romance is an ongoing war between Japanese and Chinese gangs, along with a bumbling gangster, a crooked cop, and stolen drugs. Which means every moment of the duo’s courtship is punctuated by a moment of violence. At this point in the prolific Miike’s career, echoing gunfire, lopped-off limbs, and old women getting punched in the face are his standing orders.