Starring Hayato Ichihara, Shûgo
Oshinari. Written and directed by Shunji Iwai. (STC) 146 min. Screens Mar 21-25 at the Paradise (1006 Bloor W).
The music of an enigmatic pop singer named Lily Chou-Chou is the
only salvation for some lonely teens in this intermittently
extraordinary Japanese film. In All About Lily Chou-Chou's
recurring visual motif, we see each of them wandering through a field
while clutching a Discman. It seems that the only chance they get to
express any emotions at all is by typing tributes to their idol in a
chatroom. The film's use of these text crawls and canny deployment of
digital-video techniques lend some visual pizzazz to what is otherwise
a grim, overly lengthy but often affecting portrait of adolescent
suffering.
Chief among the sufferers is Hasumi (Hayato
Ichihara), the quiet, timid boy who runs the Lily website. He is one of
many who come under the sway of schoolmate Hoshino (Shûgo Oshinari).
Himself a sensitive Lily fan, Hoshino decides that he would rather be a
bully than a victim. After Hoshino nearly drowns while on holiday with
Hasumi and other friends in Okinawa, he becomes even more brutal and
his repression of the other students leads to prostitution, rape and
suicide. Not even a concert appearance by Lily offers much of a respite
for Hasumi.
Writer-director Shunji Iwai's depiction of these lawless teens
is so dyspeptic, you wonder why he doesn't just ship them all off to
the island in
Battle Royale. But Iwai also has a flair for
delicately conveying all the things these youths struggle to keep
private. And like the kids with their Discmans, viewers get to
periodically escape from the torments by immersing themselves in the
ultra-vivid cinematography and genuinely wondrous music, which combines
elements of Debussy, Björk and Japanese singer UA, who seems a likely
inspiration for the fictional Lily. Anyone who ever used a song to
soften the cruelty of the world will understand why the characters hold
those Discmans so tightly.