Vague Visages’ Love on Trial review contains minor spoilers. Kôji Fukada’s 2025 movie features Yuki Kura, Erika Karata and Kenjiro Tsuda. Check out the VV home page for more film criticism, movie reviews and film essays.

For those unfamiliar with the hyper-stylized worlds of K-Pop and J-Pop, the significance of Rose’s “Toxic Till the End” music video will likely get lost in translation. Not only is the song a reflection on a failed relationship, but the Blackpink star appears alongside Gossip Girl reboot actor Evan Mock and briefly kisses him on the lips after a heated argument featuring their characters. As an outside observer, one could easily miss this attempt to shatter taboos about idol romances. But as a member of one of the industry’s biggest girl groups, it’s an effective way of throwing down the gauntlet to artists lower down the food chain, suggesting that the archaic industry rules — in which idols are instructed to remain single and even secret relationships are considered undesirable — are finally ripe for change.

On the other side of the Korean Strait, however, director Kôji Fukada found a music industry far more resistant to change, in large part due to a culture still lagging far behind the rest of the world’s developed nations when it comes to gender equality. His Cannes Premiere title Love On Trial began development a decade ago in collaboration with co-writer Shintaro Mitani, who currently writes for a J-Pop idol group and subsequently put the filmmaker in touch with countless artists whose experiences helped flesh out the legal drama further. What is surprising about Love on Trial is that it wears this research lightly, with the central court case itself largely glossed over within the drama despite the eye-catching title — it’s more of a romantic melodrama with impossibly high stakes than it is a full-throated indictment of the industry.

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Kyoko Saito, a former teen idol herself, stars as Mai, a member of a girl group seemingly on the cusp of stardom — although, in Japan’s oversaturated market, it’s difficult to ascertain how that would be different from their current standing. What is certain is that the “no relationships” clause in the group’s contract will be enforced even more strictly in Love on Trial, with creepy older men representing a significant portion of their fanbase, visiting their every concert purely for the meet-and-greets (the J-Pop industry seems to be kept afloat entirely by the encouragement of these para-social dynamics). However, away from the stage, Mai and her bandmates are deeply uninterested in living up to that side of the bargain, and they end up causing a minor controversy after being pictured with a Twitch streamer. This causes a shakeup in their fanbase as the protagonist reconnects with a former flame, Kei (Yuki Kura), a budding musician who unassumingly makes Mai question whether giving up love for a slim shot at fame is really worth it.

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Fukada doesn’t fully succeed in letting a wide-reaching criticism of the industry sit neatly alongside a foundational coming-of-age romance, with the intimate personal stakes never communicated with the furious passion needed, as Love on Trial’s drama is far too tender even when the characters’ personal lives are dictated by an all-powerful capitalist goliath. The director’s previous Cannes selections, including the 2016 Un Certain Regard Jury Prize winner Harmonium, feature harsher emotional extremes, which are oddly refrained from in Love on Trial despite the increased weight behind the romantic stakes. In certain sequences, the film gives an appropriately eerie air, such as when elderly men feel comfortable describing a young girl as “impure” during meet-and-greets for daring to have a relationship outside of the band. The non-sensationalized tone helps make this feel even more uncomfortable than it likely reads on the page, even if it’s downplayed onscreen. The fallout Mai faces for going public with her relationship takes place almost entirely offscreen, solely depicted months after-the-fact in deliberately dry proceedings which attempt to unpack romance in a manner devoid of emotion.

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In Love on Trial, Fukada lets his melodramatic instincts take over, even crossing the line into magical realism in one standout scene where Kei impresses Mai with a rooftop magic trick, appearing to take flight into the Tokyo sky. The director successfully wrings out the mutual yearning the two share in just fleeting moments, be it nighttime drives or discreet text message exchanges from opposite sides of the same street, and yet the film doesn’t maintain the same romanticized wonder as it progresses, struggling to effectively articulate just how much strain this very public case would put on a burgeoning relationship. Fukada feels more interested in the implications of putting a public partnership under legal scrutiny, rather than fleshing out how each new wrinkle would push the couple further apart. And by the bittersweet conclusion, the narrative has undertaken so many time jumps that the romantic weight is no longer felt.

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Love on Trial’s opening two acts integrate personal drama into a subtly scathing social critique, but Fukada’s narrative loses power when the heroine must contend with the dark price of fame. As Mai retreats from the spotlight, so does the film around her, and while there are some impressive small-scale moments — such as an emotionally charged meeting with a former bandmate at her family home — the story ultimately gets too removed from the world it’s criticizing to land a rousing call-to-arms against it.

Alistair Ryder (@YesitsAlistair) is a film and TV critic based in Manchester, England. By day, he interviews the great and the good of the film world for Zavvi, and by night, he criticizes their work as a regular reviewer at outlets including The Film Stage and Looper. Thank you for reading film criticism, movie reviews and film reviews at Vague Visages.

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