First Love (2019)

I had the opportunity to see 3 movies at NIFFF this year during a short 2 days "vacation", which actually, if I think now on it, was more like a one day, but... unimportant :) ... More important is to deviate a bit from the main topic, which is the movie, but I feel that I must do it: what is NIFFF? A festival of "fantastic" film, organized yearly in Neuchatel, Switzerland, since 2001, where by chance I lived for around 4 years. My first contact with NIFFF was in 2011, when I didn't get at first how a small city with around 20000 people got to host an international film festival. And not any festival, but as far as I know one of the few events that brings together a unique niche combination of fantasy & sci-fi & horror & weird indie movies + a section dedicated to Asian Cinema. Actually, at a first sight, being there, NIFFF doesn't really look like a very big event at least in respect to the public numbers (comparing with other festivals). However, despite I'm less and less intersecting with NIFFF, mostly when I have the chance to merge it with a work trip in the area, just to give a hint of its amplitude: in 9 days it has around 60-70 movies grouped on various themed sessions, and this doesn't count documentaries, shorts, open air classics like "Alien" or "Pulp Fiction", seminars, workshops and other associated events. Over time NIFFF had guests like George R.R. Martin, Kevin Smith, and even John Carpenter in a concert. Now, given the genre of the typical NIFFF movie, you're never guaranteed you'll see a masterpiece. Probably the indie sci-fi & horrors is the niche with the most junk produced, so it's somehow expected to stumble on that here and there. On the other hand, there are also very good movies. You have something for every taste, and compiling such a diverse schedule in an otherwise relatively narrow niche is one of the festival's organization strengths. NIFFF gave me the opportunity to have a first watch of "Cabin in the Woods", "Dead Snow 2", "iNumber Number", "Jeeg Robot", or now "First Love". Which takes us back to our movie ;)

"Hatsukoi", the original title, is something of a Japanese action-thriller (we don't have only sci-fi & horror at NIFFF), directed by Takashi Miike. Probably known especially for some of the most hard to watch Asian movies, such as "Audition" or "Ichi, the Killer" (didn't see any of these), he is quite a prolific director having more than 100 movies since '91. I didn't see many of these, and some I found pretty bad ("13 Assassins", "Sukiyaki Western Django"). Still, recently, on an intercontinental flight, not having better options I got to see "Blade of the Immortal", which was quite ok. So I decided to give it a shot, although lately I'm not really that fond of excess violence on screen. The semi-ironic intro that the actual director did on the NIFFF stage, when presenting his film as a very light one made people smile. Not that surprising, we have a beheading in the first minute or so. Overall, however, the movie is watchable. There's nothing extreme in it. Let's call it: "Tarantino level" for blood & gore :)

Leo is a young boxer diagnosed with a brain tumor and not much left to live after a knock-down. In parallel with that, Kase, a lower ranked member of a yakuza clan, sets up a plan together with a corrupt cop, for hijacking a narcotics delivery. The guilt is supposed to be brought upon the rival Chinese triad and on Monica, a prostitute on drugs who has periodic visions of her abusive father's ghost. And such a vision messes up the whole plan, the girl literally running at a moment of karmic synchrony in the arms of Leo. Who just got a reading by a fortune teller predicting him excellent health + thinking on other people's wellness for success in life. Not being convinced at all by the first part, and the second not really in line with his boxing job, the guy ends up as a sort of bodyguard for the rest of the movie. The nice part is that the story unfolds on multiple threads, and the part that you might thing to be a classic version of a "damsel in distress & her knight in shining armor" doesn't get the complete focus. We have an excellent dark humor, most of it resulting from Kase's attempts to move over with his plan, where nothing works according to agenda.

It's the type of movie where spoiling too much of the action ruins it, and I think I wrote enough :) What's left to say is that behind all the bullets, swords, blood, and maybe sometimes a bit of an acid humor, with the romance not getting that much screen time (but being there though), there's still some sort of warmth in the movie, which you can feel from the beginning to the end. And that gives it a big plus, at least compared with what I've seen from Miike. Since I was mentioning Tarantino above, maybe it looks a bit like a "True Romance" in Japanese version. Just a bit. That would be all. Unfortunately we don't have yet a trailer per se, and for now the movie is still in limited release moving through festivals, but I guess it will get out also mainstream towards the end of the year. For now, long live NIFFF! ;)

Rating: 4.5 out of 5