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First Love (In Translation Series)

A young boxer and a call girl get caught up in a drug-smuggling scheme over the course of one night in Tokyo.
Hatsukoi (original title)
(NR, 108 min.)

Showtimes

Friday, October 25, 2019

9:30 PM

Saturday, October 26, 2019

9:30 PM

Wednesday, October 30, 2019

7:30 PM

Thursday, October 31, 2019

7:30 PM

This film is part of our In Translation series of recent international films of note.

A young boxer and a call girl get caught up in a drug-smuggling scheme over the course of one night in Tokyo. [Metacritic]

Starring: Becky, Jun Murakami, Masataka Kubota, Nao Omori, Sakurako Konishi, Sansei Shiomi, Seiyô Uchino, Shôta Sometani
Director: Takashi Miike
Language: Japanese
Genre(s): Drama, Comedy, Crime

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"Miike’s seemingly offhand inventiveness is evident in almost every shot and cut."

— Glenn Kenny, The New York Times

"To watch it is to feel Miike’s industriousness and partake of his pleasure: The cinema is his first love and likely also his last."

— Justin Chang, Los Angeles Times

"The pacing is breakneck but the economy with which Miike establishes his various narrative threads and characters is astonishing."

— Rory O'Connor. The Film Stage

"If you haven’t sampled the works of Miike before now, here’s the perfect introduction. And yakuza action-comedy fans, you never forget your First Love."

— Roger Moore, Movie Nation

"Frequently sublime ... a piece of work so feral and full of life that you’d never guess it was (at least) the 90th feature its director has made in the last 30 years."

— David Ehrlich, IndieWire

"First Love ranks among Miike’s most purely entertaining movies (out of more than 100 now!), gradually building steam until it reaches a sustained pitch of cheerful insanity."

— Mike D'Angelo, The A.V. Club

"First Love is the kind of film that’s designed for seen-it-all genre fans who know these tropes (the scheming criminal, the dewy ingenues, the cold-hearted lady assassin, and so on) and appreciate seeing them tweaked in new directions, and treated with an air of fond familiarity rather than dour airlessness."

— Tasha Robinson, The Verge