All About Lily Chou Chou

For his latest film Japanese director Shunji Iwai (whose films include April Story (1998) and Love Letter (1995)) certainly hasn't shied away from the difficult issues of life in modern Japan. The perils of teenage life are shown through a group of school kids who we follow through three years of life in and out of school: a life that includes theft, underage prostitution, pimping, bullying, rape and suicide. The slow pace of the film, however, and the poetic cinematography lend a peculiar melancholic beauty to the film.

Lily Chou Chou is a Japanese singer who has a large and obsessively loyal fanbase of (mostly) teenage fans to whose sense of angst and beauty she appeals. One such kid is Yuichi (Hayato Ichihara), a sensitive fifteen year-old who has fallen in with a group of boys who use him and bully him. He starts his own website on Lily for fellow fans to communicate with each other. Under his pseudonym Philia he strikes up a web-relationship with Blue Cat who shares both his love of Lily and his feelings of loneliness. Another Lily fan is Hoshino (Shugo Oshinari), who joins Yuichi's school and is immediately disliked - he is chosen to give the opening speech at the school entrance ceremony and rumours circulate that he was top of his year at school. Shiori (Yu Aoi) is introduced to Lily's music by Yuichi. Blackmailed into prostitution she is forced to see clients after school. And then there is Kuno (Ayumi Ito), another girl in their class, who is mercilessly bullied by the other girls for being the most talented and the most beautiful.

In a sense, All About Lily Chou Chou stems from the same subject as the recent Battle Royale (2000): violence and anarchy within Japanese youth. In this film a woman says to Yuichi's mother 'Kids are scary nowadays', and this fear appears to be becoming a favoured theme in contemporary Japanese cinema. Unlike Battle Royale and its ilk, there is nothing gratuitous in this film. Violence is used sparingly and often is such a way that you feel as sad for the perpetrator as for the victim. Hoshino, for example, begins as a victim but slowly changes. No longer the shy friend of Yuichi, anger over his parents' divorce and the way he has been treated at school causes him to become inwardly and outwardly destructive. The progression of Hoshino, helped immensely by Oshinari's superb acting, creates one of the most intriguing and fully realized characters you will see this year.

But it is the feeling of the film with its subtle poignancy that makes it so captivating. Iwai at one point offers a moving contrast of Shiori alone in her bedroom lying with her giant teddybear, then receiving a call on her phone and expecting it to be a 'client'. We can almost see her childhood being torn from her, along with her trust and hope in life. The colours used in the cinematography are always deep, as if constantly suggesting a sunset (a time both beautiful and sad, with loss of light inseparable from loss of hope). There is also a certain claustrophobia throughout whether the characters are in a school room, on a beach or in a field. This reflects the feeling of loneliness and unhappiness that all the characters share in varying degrees. Despite this All About Lily Chou Chou is not a depressing film; its poignant beauty and calm pace are captivating.

Reviewed by Tim Smedley