Review | 1st Kiss movie review: Takako Matsu woos a younger man in Japanese time-travel romance

Director Ayuko Tsukahara’s story follows a middle-aged woman who travels back in time to save her marriage and her husband’s life

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Takako Matsu as Kanna in a still from 1st Kiss (category I, Japanese), directed by Ayuko Tsukahara. Hokuto Matsumura co-stars.

Published: 4:15pm, 25 Mar 2025Updated: 11:55am, 26 Mar 2025

2/5 stars

Seasoned television director Ayuko Tsukahara (Grande Maison Tokyo) plunders many of the same themes she explored in her 2018 feature debut Cafe Funiculi Funicula in her latest big-screen venture, the time-travel romance 1st Kiss.

Penned by Yuji Sakamoto, whose award-winning screenplay for Hirokazu Koreeda’s Monster also deals with temporal distortion and multiple perspectives, 1st Kiss follows a middle-aged widow as she travels back in time over and over again to the day she met her late husband in an effort to save him from his untimely fate.

As with the time-travelling coffee shop in Tsukahara’s debut, a scientific explanation for precisely how Kanna (Takako Matsu) is transported back to a specific day in 2009 is deemed unnecessary here. Instead, the film embraces the intangible power of love – albeit seasoned with a generous sprinkling of grief and regret.

Kanna simply needs to drive through a closed tunnel to magically appear in the picturesque Saitama resort town where her path first crossed that of Kakeru (Hokuto Matsumura), an awkward palaeontology student.