My first experience with Ride or Die didn’t go well. The pacing seemed bizarre, and I didn’t buy the premise (killing a stranger to help an estranged friend after 10 years apart). After rewatching Ryuichi Hiroki’s Netflix film, however, the 142-minute runtime feels justified.
Set in Tokyo, Ride or Die begins with Rei Nagasawa (Kiko Mizuhara) luring a man to a hotel room and painting the shades red with a neck stab and throat-slash. In a subsequent “24 Hours Before” sequence, it’s revealed that Rei is a plastic surgeon with a long-time girlfriend. After receiving a phone call from Nanae Shinoda (Honami Soto) — her former high school crush– she’s overwhelmed by romantic feelings and learns that the woman has been severely beaten by her husband. Ride or Die examines Rei’s motivations for murder, along with Nanae’s perspective as a battered, suicidal woman who desires a genuine physical connection.
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Ride or Die’s logic makes better sense when factoring in the life-long trauma that both women have experienced, and then interpreting their actions through a doppelgänger filter. At first, Rei seems entirely obsessed with having/consuming Nanae. A flashback sequence even reveals that she once provided financial assistance to her crush and stated that any debts could be settled through sex. Ride or Die’s queer romance story thematically links to Ingmar Bergman’s 1966 classic Persona, in which the minds of two women from significantly different backgrounds merge. Rei empathizes with Nanae’s trauma but also seems to feel it, too, evidenced by numerous scenes where she breaks down and sobs uncontrollably, unable to fully understand her thoughts. Rei’s sexuality has been the source of life-long stress (as revealed through flashbacks), and the sight of a loved one’s physical bruising seems to trigger negative thoughts about past emotional abuse. With Nanae — a woman from a privileged background who admittedly married the “highest bidder” — she seems to desire Rei’s personal freedom, or at least an idealized lifestyle: partner, job, safety. In a key mid-movie moment, Ride or Die’s protagonists spiritually become one, it seems, when Nanae explains her immediate wants and needs, with Rei’s Mona Lisa smile and fluttering eyes teasing a narrative shift.
“Us two… we’re not friends, nor are we lovers. But I’m not against having a good talk with you during our remaining time.
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Ride or Die doesn’t ask the audience to make sense of Rei’s actions, but rather to understand why Nanae’s presence has such a profound effect. While the Netflix film often loses rhythm through extended car sequences (which ironically feature mainstream music by Norah Jones and The Cardigans), the second-half visuals subtly create a dream-like effect. Wide shots circle around the protagonists as they bond while gazing at the sea, and dripping rain sound design hints that Rei and Nanae’s shared lucid experience will soon end. Mizuhara is clearly the more seasoned performer of the two leads, but Satô’s willingness to literally strip herself down forces the audience to see her character’s tragic truth, which makes the graphic sex sequences especially complex and intense. Plenty of double-themed movies have been made over the years, but Ride or Die seems like an ideal companion piece to Persona. Both films are sexually provocative, and both require multiple viewings to better understand the perspectives of each female protagonist.
Q.V. Hough (@QVHough) is Vague Visages’ founding editor.
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