Dir: Yukinari Hanawa. Jap. 2006. 114mins.
Teenage rebellion, social history andtrue crime merge together in tenderly anaemic fashion in First Love,based on a quasi-autobiographical novel by MisuzuNakahara. The first feature in 10 years by Tokyo Skin director Yukinari Hanawa, First Lovehas struck a slight chord with audiences in Japan - where it was released thismonth- for its reference to a notorious theft in the 1960s, and also for thelead presence of popular young actress Aoi Miyazaki(best known at home in from local success Nana and outside Japan from ShinjiAoyama's Eureka).

But the consistently softtone, and the failure to find a distinctive voice either as social reminiscenceor as heist story, will make this an unlikely export. First Love has its international premiere at KarlovyVary (Horizons) next week.

The film is inspired by Japan'sso-called 300 Million Yen Affair. In December 1968, a fake motorcycle policemanstopped a car carrying a huge amount of money belonging to the Toshiba corporation; neither the money nor the policeman was everseen again, and the unsolved case was officially closed in 1975. In her novel FirstLove, writer Misuzu Nakahara claimed that she wasthe robber.

The young Misuzu (Miyazaki) is a lonely schoolgirl from a troubledfamily background, who starts to haunt the B bar, in Tokyo's Shinjuku district,where a gang of disaffected youths hang out drinking and listening to jazz: thereason this gauche young thing is accepted by these hardcore hipsters, we laterlearn, is because moody ringleader Ryo is Misuzu'sestranged brother (he's played by the actress's own brother Masaru Miyazaki).

Misuzu falls under the spell of Ryo's enigmatic, seeminglystraight-edged friend Kishi (Koide), who inveiglesher into a plan to overthrow Japanese society (the story takes place againstthe background of Japan's 1960s student radicalism).

Misuzu is to be accomplice in the Toshiba heist - and she'srequired to pull it off single-handed. She rises to the occasion with aplomb,but as soon as it's carried off, she and Kishi stopseeing each other, and Misuzu falls into furtherdepression as the old gang falls apart.

First Love is quite specific about political and socialsignposts of late 1960s Japan - the narrative spans from 1967 to 1969 - and iseconomical with its scene-setting, never going overboard to give its charactersan obviously retro look. But narratively, the film isa damp squib, building up gradually to the heist itself - which is conciselyexecuted - but then reverting to uneventful moodiness, with much time devotedto showing the delicate ingenue Miyazaki waftingmoodily around, as Misuzu heads for decorousmeltdown.

The film's conclusion wouldseem to be that crime doesn't pay - although it might have been interesting tohave some sense of how the real-life Misuzu Nakaharamade her crime fantasy pay by spinning the robbery into a novel years later.

The film's title has anironic ring, given that the lovers' attraction is only ever consummated in acrime which Misuzu commits solo. The film certainlydoesn't deliver as any kind of conventional romance, and even as anintrospective 'sentimental education' story, it provides little psychologicalor emotional insight into its heroine.

The direction is polishedbut impersonal, and a distinct minus is the slushy score by Japanese composersCOIL (not to be confused with the UK experimental act of the same name).

Production companies
Gaga Films
Micott & Basara
An Entertainment

International sales
Gaga Communications

Executive producers
Shinya Kawai
Yuka Hoshino

Producers
Shigeo Minakami
Shusaku Matsuoka

Screenplay
Yukinari Hanawa
Harumi Ichikawa
Tetsuro Kamogawa
from the novel by Misuzu Nakahara

Cinematography
Junichi Fujisawa

Production design
Iwao Saito

Editor
Nobuko Tomita

Music
COIL

Main cast
Aoi Miyazaki
Keisuke Koide
Masuru Miyazaki
Rena Komine