Yeah, the best part of the movie was probably counting how many times my friend said "what the fuck?" with his hands in the air. So you have a Middle/ Beginning/ End set up that wasn't apparent to me at first and the odd flow of the movie nearly caused one of my friends to have a mental breakdown. This is already occurring during the first third of the film, and the second third chronicles Yuichi meeting Hoshino, with the last part returning to a chronicle of Hoshino's bastard ways. The confusing part about this is the way the film jumps around. He pimps out one of their classmates, makin' some cheddar on the side. Once the victim, he now bullies and steals. Upon their return to school, he is a different character altogether.
This seems to trigger something in his mind. There were a few tedious aspects to this scene, but all in all it served an important purpose to ushering the story along. It's so insanely realistic, in that the handycam captures what it feels like during their entire vacation, and it almost seems like nothing was edited out. This is an odd section of the movie, both in the way it was filmed, and the general content. After rolling with Yuichi and his few friends, they all run into an opportunity (by this I mean through jacking someone's wallet) to vacation on the beautiful island of Okinawa. The catch is, everyone pretty much clowns him for this. He is great at Kendo, and he represents their incoming Freshman class. Everything's gravy Įventually Yuichi befriends the young boy Hoshino. So Yuichi is finally meeting some people he can connect with and wax poetic about his favorite topic. When I say they obsess over Lily, I'm not exaggerating at all, They call her the Ether among a boat load of other weird ass unexplainable dialogue. It's all fairly reminiscent of any basic chat room or message board like KFC, but instead of obsessing over Takashi Miike, all of the subject matter is about Lily Chou Chou. He is picked on a bit, and he manages to strike up a few friendships, but all in all it seems that he sticks to himself.Īt night he scours the afore-mentioned "Lily-Philia" website, and chats it up with numerous faceless names, like Blue Cat (who he is closer to than he realizes). But that's a really nerdy comparison, so I'll leave it at that.
He reminded me of a live action Shinji Ikari, at least through his personality. We are first introduced to Yuichi, our lead character, who is as introverted as you could possibly imagine, speaking a few handfuls of lines throughout the film's run. But everything (for the most part) eventually gets pieced together. If you weren't confused at the start of the film, then you probably weren't watching. The film opens with chat room style type running across the screen, trading off obscure messages about Lily Chou Chou and how she is the "ether" that connects everything. The contrast of the gorgeous and bright Digital film with the shaky cameras held by the characters lend an unsettling mood to these scenes, even if more than a few moments seemed out of place. Lily Chou Chou was the first movie to be filmed with the 24 Progressive Digital Video Camera, and there are sections mixed in using Standard Handycams as well. The very first frame that blazes onto the screen was beautifully shot, and it just kept my jaw on the floor for it's entire two and a half hour duration. It's taken over my mind completely through a mix of perplexing questions and complete and utter awe. And two weeks later, I'm still thinking non-stop about this film.
As of today it's been a couple of weeks since me and some friends dragged our lazy asses to the local arthouse theater to check out "All About Lily Chou Chou", which (oddly enough with only 10 prints circulating) happened to be a part of our annual small as hell Asian Film Festival.