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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 |
 "A film from the ether..."This is a film for anybody who's ever been a teenager who has used music to escape from the cruel world of people who just don't understand... it's also for anybody who's been on an online bulletin board music fan site... (yes, that means half of you guys who are reading this...) I have to admit, this film is a little slow, and somewhat confusing, to start with... I'd also read heaps of reviews saying how great this film was, and about an hour into it, I was starting to question this... as I suspect were the three or four people around me who had gotten up and left by this stage... but I stood (well, sat) my ground and sat through the two and a half hours, and it was more than worth it... Sometimes funny, but always balanced with a sense of futility and depression... this is the essence of the film, and this is what life is like for the fans that are brought together online by Lily Chou-Chou's (a fictional J-pop star) music (something remeniscent of Portishead or Bjork)... a boy who is tormented by his ex-best friend-...-school bully, but it too scared to fight back, despite the damage that is being done to his other friends, and struggles to keep his sanity through his adolescence. People will probably completely disagree with me here, but AALCC kinda reminded me of Degrassi High, with a Japanese setting, a cooler soundtrack, and (arguably) somewhat grittier and depressing. Oh, and if you watch this, keep in mind that the timeline does jump around a little. |
