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All About Lily Chou Chou Actors: Hayato Ichihara, Shûgo Oshinari Director: Shunji Iwai Number of Items: 1 Format: Color, Closed-captioned, Widescreen Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated) Running Time: 146 minutes Studio: Image Entertainment Product Group: DVD Release Date: 2005-02-15 Buy from Amazon |
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From Amazon.com The pain and suffering of junior high is always good movie fodder, and in All About Lily Chou-Chou the topic gets an unfamiliar and moody airing. Director Shunji Iwai takes a discursive, sometimes baffling look into the life of a bullied kid whose misery is broken by his worship of a pop star, Lily Chou-Chou. Internet chat room exchanges punctuate the film's narrative, as Yuichi and his anonymous Lily-philes share their intoxication with the "Ether"--the mystery of life that Lily's voice somehow illuminates. The film's style (and length) offer little in the way of traditional movie-watching pleasure, and the mystifying storytelling will have some viewers giving up in exasperation. Still, the portrait of adolescent loneliness rings true, and the ferocity of school bullying is laid bare. On the latter subject, this film is a little like the kill-or-be-killed apocalypse of Battle Royale, without the fantasy overlay. --Robert Horton From Description Yuichi is in the 8th grade and worships Lily Chou-Chou, a Bjork-like chanteuse whose music is lush and transcendent – the perfect tool to escape the pain and anxiety that fills his brutal life in Japan. At home, Yuichi rarely leaves his room, spending all his time in the chat room of Lily Chou-Chou’s fan website, but little by little, the reality of Yuichi’s offline life becomes unbearable when he is ensnared in a nightmare of teenage prostitution, petty theft, and possible murder. A hauntingly poetic story in the vein of Battle Royale, All About Lily Chou-Chou is a disturbing look at the terror and isolation that characterizes today’s youth of Japan. |
 "POETIC NIGHTMARE "Shunji Iwai's ALL ABOUT LILY CHOU-CHOU (Home Vision Entertainment) is an unflinching and finally harrowing examination of adolescent isolation in Japan. Yuichi Isumi is a bullied eighth grader, a nobody who seeks refuge from his brutal life in on-line chat rooms with other kids who literally worship pop star Lily Chou Chou, an eccentric singer with a cultic fan website. Off line, Yuichi's life spirals out of control as he becomes ever more enmeshed in criminal behavior, including robbery, blackmail, forced prostitution and perhaps murder. Admittedly strange and shocking, this film is also poetic and beautiful. It evokes the same dissonance as the fractured life of Yuichi. This first Japanese feature shot on digital video has an incredible look.  "An awesome film."It should be understood that the situations depicted in this film find their beginnings in what has become the increasingly dismal sociological reality of contemporary Japan. Iwai has choreographed an amazingly fluid storyline that is neither cliched nor far-fetched. Despite complaints that the film may be perhaps too long, too graphic, too pretentious, too incredulous, I find it to be near perfection. The visuals are stunning and the storyline sophisticated. The Iwai/Shinoda collaboration succeeds where Kar Wai/Doyle collaboration in recent years has become excessive and tired. "Angels and Monsters"At first I chalked it up to cultural difference. "Why do I need to watch a film about bad kids in Japan?" I thought. "I was nothing like that; I can't relate to this at all." But I kept watching. The lush colors, the mesmerizing light, the amazing teenage actors all held me in their stories. Then I remembered, yes, this was an awful time...14 years old; insanely alive and confused...I watched the making-of documentary of the internet-novel-turned-film and understood why All About Lily Chou-Chou had won awards from both the 2002 Berlin and Shanghai International Film Festivals. Youth is so often shot with a Vaseline-coated lens on screen and in memory. We all think we were "good kids." Only in passing do we acknowledge the power of the ages between 13 and 15 for the immense potential for vitality and cruelty. But director and writer Shunji Iwai has created a film that shows children as they have power to be. The story is centered around Yuichi Hasumi, told through his alias, philia, in his BBS-style chat-room "Lilyphilia," devoted to the fictional musician, Lily Chou-Chou. It is the "ether" of her music that enchants him-the life-force or chi that flows through her and into the world by her voice and electronic stylings. Debussy, Satie, the Beatles, and Björk are all said to have a similar ether. Between the subtle electronic score of Takeshi Kobayashi and the classic piano solos of Claude Debussy, I understood ether immediately, and the escapist power of this music within Yuichi's chaotic, bullied life. At the same time, there was no pity for him, or for any other character. All are complexly expressive: not the toothpaste-ad acting we've come to expect from teen actors in America. Frustration and injustice flowed beneath control and rage. Bitterness and unrequited longing linger under the happiest expressions. Strength and courage grow in spite of public humiliation. Admiration and servility cover deep fear and inadequacy. Don DeLillo, in his novel, White Noise, understood this when he wrote, "It is all there, in full force, charges waves of identity and being. There are no amateurs in the world of children." All are swimming in their growing bodies, in their malleable identities, their secrets, intense feelings, betrayals; all in the context of a junior high school. This is not about culture shock. This is not about cultural difference. All About Lily Chou-Chou rewires our memories, makes us see our 14-year-old selves as we were: shifting and spinning between angel and monstrosity.  "Incomprehensible; An Unwatchable Film"All About Lily Chou-Chou squanders beautiful cinematography and an interesting framing device (the narration occurs via the typing of a message board) and creates a truly unwatchable cinematic experience. Why? There are no characters to care about; no story to be interested in. This is a trainwreck of a film. I will attempt to describe what remnants of the plot I understood. A fourteen-year old boy, Yuichi, who is obsessed with the singer, Lily Chou-Chou intensifies his penchant for deliquency as he and his friends become intrenched in bullying, pimping, and theft intensify. The story lacks a compelling arc, mainly because Yuichi and his buddies lack personalities- which is from where my main complain from the film derives. I can forgive boring, interminable films, but what I can't forgive is exploitation masquerading as art. All About Lily Chou-Chou egriously depicts teen violence as the product of vicious gangsters- not the insecure, vulnerable, and quirky kids you and I recognize as teenagers. There is no humanity in this film, just a piddling kind of sniveling sense of condemnation and exploitation. Disturbing events occur, and there is no reference made to them for the rest of the film. In one brutal scene, the main character, Yuichi is brutally beaten (near to death) and forced to masturbate. In the next scene, he doesn't have a scratch and is again friends with his abusers. Another appalling juxtaposition is the way a young 14 year old girl is pimped out to a businessman, only for the businessman to run away after hugging her. The director of this film has no respect for the brutality of the material that he is depicting- extracting its shock value and running from its consequences. Rarely have I reacted so negatively to a film. "Beautiful"Although this movie can be a bit confusing as it hops around in time sequence, it is really poignant and worth watching. It focuses on Japanese youths and the troubles that they face in the world today. Much different than anything you might see in an American teen movie, it is much darker and surreal. A young boy who drowns his sorrows in the music of Lily Chou-Chou, a Japanese version of Bjork, struggles with everyday life--and not just your normal teenage angst, either. This movie deals with rape, violence, depression, and so much more. You have to really want to understand this movie to enjoy it...be in the mood to relate to others and really get into the characters, because it is not a light movie. |
