I Hate But Love (1962) User Reviews

It took me a while to get into this, but it's a pretty good movie

[zetes · 7/10 · 27 April 2014]

A beloved talk show host (Yujiro Ishihara) rejects his increasingly fake-seeming life, shirks his busy schedule, and throws away his non-physical relationship with his manager/girlfriend (Ruriko Asaoka) when he decides to bring to fruition the dreams of his newest human interest story, a woman who has promised her pen pal boyfriend, a doctor who lives in a remote area, that she will deliver her old jeep to him. Asaoka is desperate to keep Ishihara's career intact, so she follows him with a bunch of TV cameras in tow, hoping to at least create some reality television from the situation. Ishihara is sick of it all, though, and does his best to escape. What begins as a sort of romantic comedy turns more desperate and crazy as both Ishihara and Asaoka lose grip of their sanity. I found this movie a tad confusing (let's see if anyone reading this can make out the plot from my description), but it held my interest between the fine performances and good filmmaking. The final 20 minutes are very good, and I think a second viewing might convince me that this is a little better than I thought it was.

A Timeless Classic

[ebiros2 · 8/10 · 30 June 2012]

There are very few movies that can be called a timeless classic from Japan, or any where else in the world. If Kurosawa's Seven Samurai was the timeless classic from the '50s, this certainly deserves the title from the '60s.

Daisaku Kita (Yujiro Ishihara) is a heart throb idol. He's multi-talented star who has his own radio show, and TV appearances. He has a girlfriend/manager Noriko (Ruriko Asaoka). They have an agreement not to be intimate with each other, but are constantly walking the thin line. One day his friend and associate Ichiro (Hiroyuki Nagato) brings advertisement from news paper seeking for a driver to deliver the owner's jeep to Kyushu. The advertisement stipulates that no delivery fee will be paid to the driver. Curious, Daisaku and Ichiro goes to visit the owner of the Jeep. The owner turns out to be Yoshiko (Izumi Ashikawa) - fiancé of a doctor in an isolated village in Kyushu. The jeep is in much need at his medical facility where transportation is unavailable. Daisaku agrees to deliver the jeep despite the fact that he already has scheduled appearances on TV. Noriko tries to stop him, but his mind is made up. Ichiro seizes the opportunity and creates a documentary of Daisuke's delivery. Noriko is busy trying to put spin control on the scandalous behavior of Daisaku, but isn't succeeding.

The good of this movie is in its first half. Like Breakfast at Tiffanies predicted the coming of party set lifestyle of the '60s in United States, this movie predicts at how Japan's culture will become in the '70s. Lifestyle Daisuke lives is surprisingly contemporary, and even in the 21st century, with few changes in the furniture, his lifestyle is like those of the people living in modern day Japan. In this sense, like so many of other Yujiro Ishihara's movies, the movie predicts future cultural development of Japan.

I'm surprised to realize that they already had color television broadcast when this movie was released in Japan.

Ruriko Asaoka is captured at the height of her beauty, and her role as Noriko was so popular that it created two other spin off movies featuring her role.

A worthwhile social artifact to watch from the early '60s Japan.

Silly, Soporific, and Soggy.

[net_orders · 5/10 · 26 February 2017]

I HATE BUT LOVE (NIKUI AN-CHIKUSHOU). Viewed on Streaming. Restoration = six (6) stars; sound = five (5) stars; music = five (5) stars; subtitles = three (3) stars; cinematography = two (2) stars. Director Koreyoshi Kurahara tries his hand at a road picture involving a television interviewer (who is ill equipped to deal with overnight fame), his manager/nanny (who is sexy, sexually repressed, and manic-depressive to boot), and a classic Jaguar sports convertible (whose top seems to be nonexistent and eventually meets an unfortunate end). Kurahara fills the first third of his film with quirky and amusing turns (including a unique alarm clock). But when the Director goes on the road, things quickly become repetitious, unimaginative, drawn out, predicable, and just pain boring. Top-billed actor Yuujirou Ishihara turns in a wooden (and forgettable) performance as the TV star and serves mainly as a backboard for scene-stealing actress Ruriko Asaoka who plays his control-freak manager. Asaoka effectively shares top billing with the sports car while proceeding to histrionically devour most of the scenery. It's quite a sight! The convertible is often driven/parked in the pouring rain sans top. Miraculously, the water does not seem to impact it's lush interior or the electronics in and under the dash! (Dousing the principals with water also occurs in other scenes throughout the film.) Cinematography (wide screen, color) is exceedingly substandard (and, perhaps, the worse yet to be exhibited in a modern Japanese film from a major studio). Many shots are out of focus, blurry/foggy or both (this does not seem to be due to poor restoration, as other shots are razor sharp). The majority of moving vehicle scenes (including rear-screen projections) are unsteady and jerky to the point of annoyance. Front-facing traveling vehicle shots are also filled with road dust from the leading camera truck that can partially obscure the vehicle! Music is okay except for irritating jazz riffs for the sake of jazz. Especially ludicrous are scenes of night-club "dancing" by the principals to wild jazz on the sound track! Sound effects are mostly unimaginative: every vehicle squeals the same way when stopping or turning (chronically under inflated tires?); most vehicle engines sound about the same; etc. Looping, however, is fine. Subtitles need a major grammatical scrubbing. They are way too long and not especially accurate. Signs/writings are at least partially translated. Song lyrics are translated. Badly dated Nikkatsu Studio programmer. WILLIAM FLANIGAN, PhD.

Not very good

[Jeremy_Urquhart · 5/10 · 9 January 2023]

Sadly, I wasn't really feeling this one. It starts with a decent amount of energy and promise, but starts to feel repetitive after the first half, and I think it made its two lead characters too unlikeable - the guy's obnoxious and eventually even abusive, and the girl doesn't feel like a real person, the way she doesn't seem to want to do anything but pursue this jerk.

It's got a watchable first half followed by a tedious, sometimes kind of bad second half. Not the worst thing ever, but certainly a disappointment (it would easily be ranked behind the other two Koreyoshi Kurahara films I've seen so far, Intimidation and I Am Waiting).