Genre: Drama, Romance, Thriller
Actor: Anne Suzuki, Artemis Snow, Honami Sato, Kiko Mizuhara, Sara Minami, Setsuko Karasuma, Shinya Niiro, Shunsuke Tanaka, Tetsushi Tanaka, Yôko Maki, Yui Uemura
Director: Ryuichi Hiroki
1. Ride or Die, 2021
Love at its infancy can be pure and sweet, but sometimes, when it’s forced down, locked up inside without calm acceptance, this yearning can fester into something toxic, something too passionate to control. Ride or Die is based on the Gunjō manga, which portrays a relationship between two high school girl best friends made toxic when Nanae recruits Rei to seduce and murder Nanae’s abusive husband. Gunjō wasn’t a perfect representation of a lesbian relationship, but in the hands of a mostly male crew, the resulting lesbian road film adaptation is gorgeous, but feels a tad too long, and a tad too gratuitous with its sex and violence. Ride or Die has an intriguing, boundary-pushing premise about the dark side of devotion, but its execution makes the film an uneasy watch.