In the spirit of “Thelma and Louise,” a lesbian fugitive and the woman she’d kill for hit the road with three stilettos and a blood-red BMW in “Ride or Die.” A glammed up, erotically-charged cocktail of amour fou and true romance directed by Ryuichi Hiroki and written by Nami Kikkawa, the Netflix production gives agency to full-blooded female protagonists. That’s a rarity in Japan’s studio-dominated, cookie-cutter entertainment industry, which explains its liberating, inexhaustible energy.Ride or Die 2021 Movie Download.
Based on the adult-skewing manga “Gunjo” (Ultramarine) by Ching Nakamura, the film stars actor-model Kiko Mizuhara (“Norwegian Wood”) and actor-musician Honami Sato. The two celebs’ graphic sex scenes and full-frontal nudity are bound to be a talking point in Japan, where managers usually exert such tight control over their actors’ public image they forbid anything risqué. Given such a system, the audacity and ardor Mizuhara and Sato generated on screen prove their commitment.
In another break with Japanese industry conventions, whereby screen adaptations must follow original sources to a T, Kikkawa got the greenlight to make significant changes, such as making this a road movie. The two protagonists, who are anonymous in the manga, and simply referred to as “Les-san” (Ms. Lesbian) and “Megane” (Glasses), are given proper names. The Japanese title was changed to “Kanojo,” denoting both “she” and “girlfriend.”
Hiroki, who was supervising director on Netflix series “Hibana,” is a veteran known for his sensitivity in portraying women’s desires and insecurities in popular festival items like “Vibrator” and “Kabukicho Love Hotel.” Here, his mindful depiction of same-sex attraction is a far cry from the cringing stereotypes traded in other Japanese LGBTQ-themed films, like the transgender martyr in “Midnight Swan” or the soft-pedaling of BL (boys’ love) romance for straight female consumption in “The Cornered Mouse Dreams of Cheese.”