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| ALL ABOUT LILY CHOU CHOU. Starring - Hayato Ichihara - Shugo Oshinari - Yu Aoi - Aymi Ito. Director - Shunji Iwai. 2001. If you think the title sounds wacky, Lily Chou-chou is actually a fictitious pop singer Director Shunji Iwai created for the film. I heard that the man actually produced two Lily Chou-chou albums, hosted a website of Lily on the Internet, and used the information he gathered about Japanese youth in the film. It's all stupid nonsense, of course. At best it's a gimmick to get people to talk about the film, and if this film is truly based on real material Iwai collected through the web, then the Japanese have a real tough problem on their hands, because the teenagers in this movie are really, really screwed up. You see, in the world of "All About Lily Chou-chou," going to high school can be a very terrible thing, because if you were a boy, you will get beaten up by bullies, and one day you may become one of them. If you were a girl, then make sure you don't get rounded up by your classmates after school. They will gang rape you, videotape the process, blackmail you until you agree to work as a prostitute. You will be forced to have sex with middle aged businessmen and, what's worse, you can't keep the money yourself!!! Now, that's what happened to eighth grader Yuchi (Hayato Ichihara), who watches as his best friend Hoshino (Shugo Oshinari) morphs from a top-student into a violent bully. To save his own ass, he joins Hoshino's group and is given the thankless task of escorting a classmate who is forced to prostitute herself to meet with clients. Later he can do nothing but watch when his dream-girl Kuno (Ayumi Ito) suffers the same fate. As an escape mechanism, he listens to Lily 24 hours a day and hosts a website of Lily on the Internet. Apparently, as can be seen from his other works like "Love Letter" and "Fireworks: Should We See It From the Side or the Bottom?", Shunji Iwai has a thing about high school kids. Not the Michael Jackson kind, though. Unlike those films, things are completely dark and bleak here. I am not sure if kids are really like that in Japan, but the kids here are really scary, and they do a lot of scary things. Plus nobody is happy during the entire run of the film. At some point it is almost certain the film has a statement to make about the depressing lives these teenagers lead, but the film lacks a strong narrative to develop fully any of the stories. But then, to be honest with you, I don't really care about the plot because I don't think it's the point. I mean, hell, if I can gang rape my high school classmates whenever I like, I am flying to Japan right now. And what's with the Okinawa trip? See, around the middle of the film we jump back to the summer a year ago just before eighth grade starts, when Hoshino traveled to Okinawa with Yuchi and a few others. Iwai seems to be suggesting that Hoshino turned into a bully because of some bad experiences he had during the trip. He nearly drowned at sea, and he saw some pothead get run over by a truck. But do we become bullies because of that kind of stuff? It's almost like he told himself, "Thank God I didn't drown, now I must build my own prostitution empire." So what makes "All About Lily Chou Chou" so great? Because it looks good, and because it has a soundtrack made up of piano music by Debussy (which explains the name "Lily Chou Chou"). You see, the story is set in a small town where on both sides of the road are endless green fields. It's great just to be absorbed by the mood, and anything else you get from the film is strictly bonus. There are also countless chatroom messages in Japanese popping up on the screen once in a while. It feels kind of hip and refreshing at first, but after like twenty minutes, my eyes started to ache, and I hated the graphical way the words popped up. I can also imagine that if I happen to know Japanese, those words may feel a bit pretentious too. Seriously, I don't find anything delightful about the plot, growing up sucks and we know it already. It's really only the mood that counts, and the great visuals do compensate for everything. My advice is, don't look too hard, just sit back, relax and enjoy the ride. 8********stars. © 2002 Geeky Marcus. NATURAL BORN VIEWERS. |
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