All About Lily Chou-Chou
All About Lily Chou-Chou
NR | 12 July 2002 (USA)
All About Lily Chou-Chou Trailers

Charts the troubled teenage years of students Yūichi Hasumi and Shūsuke Hoshino, exploring the shifting and complex power dynamics of their relationship against the backdrop of Yūichi's love for the dreamy and abstract music of fictional pop star Lily Chou-Chou.

Reviews
Rijndri

Load of rubbish!!

... View More
AshUnow

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

... View More
Lollivan

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

... View More
Fleur

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

... View More
mevmijaumau

Shunji Iwai's coming-of-age film All About Lily Chou-Chou is an unusual stream of melancholic images accompanied by dreamy music and overexposed imagery which renders this entire experience as a jumbled collection of fuzzy memories held together by a string of message board posts from a certain blog. It's a loose story about increasing alienation and the effects it has on adolescents, who start to escape the real world issues through the Ether, a mystical state of mind provided to them by a (fictional) pop singer, Lily Chou-Chou. The characters are as complex as they are abstract and simple. The plot is completely out of the picture. The only thing that matters here is the atmosphere.And does the film succeed in conveying an ethereal atmosphere? Well, not really. Certain scenes do hit their mark but most of the time, you feel the movie's length and the drifting, unsteady cinematic style is far too removed from the ground for its own good. Sure, there are beautiful moments here and there, as is the soundtrack, but overall the movie feels weak, watered down, incapable of building a memorable world.From: mevmijaumauREWIND

... View More
chaos-rampant

I was perhaps lucky to have seen a Hollywood film a few days prior, Alexander Payne's latest and supposedly also about a spiritual journey of sorts and passing for an 'indie'. The comparison is devastating. The many times Oscar nominated film: airbrushed beauty mistaken for purity. This little obscurity: lyrical breath and pulse from life.In 1968, there was a film made in Japan called Nanami: Inferno of First Love, also Japanese New Wave about confused, apprehensive youth feeling the first pulls to join the fray of existence: love, pain, loss, all the adult stuff they used to know as words. The fulcrum of that film unraveled from this notion: if you peel a cabbage you get its core, but if you peel an onion? (this is really worth puzzling over btw, in a Zen way, and the film worth seeking out.)The answer to that very much pertains here. This is the New New Wave: even more visual episodic movements through edges of life, even more radical dislocations from the ordinary world of narrative. The story is about teenage high school students: cliques and counter-cliques and much tension and drama inbetween them as they discover love and power. This is woven together with a thread about music, revolving around a band named Lily Chou-Chou that is all the rage among youth. Now and then conversations are enacted in some unspecified blogosphere: this is given to us as disembodied words against a black screen. We presume we'll get to know the people behind the nicknames and identify them as one of several youths whose lives we intimately follow in its petty cockiness and idle pleasure, or even worse that they don't matter at all and this is purely ornamental. It is actually much, much deeper. Now we're lucky this is Japanese, and even perhaps unconsciously so. Typical for New Wave, the world is distinctly modern and vibrant. It is all about youthful rejection. But as with Oshima and the rest back in the 60's, what these guys perhaps don't know is that French film that seemed so radical and appealing to the Japanese at the time and was presumed to have re-invented cinematic grammar, it was built on precisely what the Japanese had first revolutionized about representation in the 18th and 19th century. The calligraphic eye.So every rejection of tradition that we find in those films, or this one now, only serves to re-discover what was so vital and groundbreaking about Japanese tradition in the first place.In other words: if the old Zen Masters were alive now, all of them exceptional poets or landscape painters in their day and with a great sense of humor, they would all be New Wave filmmakers.This is as Zen as possible and in the most pure sense of the term. Transparent images. Vital emptiness. Calligraphic flows to and from interior heart. Mournful beauty about what it means 'to read the love letters sent by the moon, wind, and snow', to quote an old Buddhist poem. Plum blossoms at the gates of suffering.So this is where it goes deeper than say, a new Malick film. There are no intricate mechanisms to structure life. That is fine but what this film does is even more difficult to accomplish. Just one lush dynamic sweep of a calligrapher's brush that paints people and worlds as they come into being and vanish again. I have never seen for example a film present death so invisibly, so poetically.So if you peel a cabbage you get a core, but if you peel an onion?We may be inclined to answer nothing. The film may seem like it was about nothing, at best tears from a teenager's overly dramatic diary. The form mirrors the diary after all, after Jonas Mekas. A whole segment about a trip to Okinawa is filmed with a cheap camcorder. Let that settle and then consider the following key scene: a choir of students gets together for a school event to sing a capella a complex piano arrangement, Debussy's Arabesque. They had a perfectly capable piano player to do it but wouldn't let her for petty school rivalries. So once more we may be inclined to think that it was too much hassle for something so simple. Adults would never let things reach that stage. A compromise would be made, the piece would be played on the piano, properly.Now all through the film we see kids listen to music, everyone seems to have his own portable cd-player for that purpose. Presumably they listen to Lily Chou-Chou, who we're told was heavily inspired by Arabesque. We don't actually listen to her. We never see her or the band, at the big concert we're left outside and marvel at a giant video projection: artificial images in place of the real thing.But in this one occasion the kids achieve something uniquely sublime: they articulate the music, actually embody it, by learning to be their own instruments and each one each other's. The entire film is the same effort: to embody inner abstract worlds and their 'ether'. The method is rigorous improvisation.Something to meditate upon.(This is one of two best films from the decade in my estimation. Incidentally both were shot on digital, our new format for spontaneous discovery).

... View More
Graham Greene

The worst thing to happen to cinema in the late twentieth century was the idea of audience expectations and the feeble classifications of genre. For me, a film should be viewed as a blank page; we go into them with no prior knowledge - other than that which is suggested by the title - and trust the instincts of the filmmaker to present their ideas in an interesting and intelligent manner. Some viewers seem to think that it is the job of the film to work "for them"; to offer them entertainment and appeal to their own personal tastes and wishes. This, however, is wrong. The viewer should work for the film, working out the overall intention of the filmmaker and the characters as well as deciphering what each individual scene means and how it accumulates to create a full, coherent whole. You might think such an approach is somewhat silly, and you're entitled to that; however, to dismiss any film because it didn't work for you personally is juvenile; especially when you consider that a film is made for mass distribution and thus, eventually, find their own audience, rather than forcing themselves on an unsuspecting public.Yes, this is a somewhat difficult film - in the sense that it has an entirely fractured narrative that plays out in no discernible order - but to dismiss it for this very reason is to accept a cinema without risk or experimentation. However, if you're willing to work a little harder at piecing the whole thing together, then the film will reward; not necessarily in the sense of being the kind of film that will leave you all warm and fuzzy inside, but rather, in the way that it forces us to think about certain ideas expressed through the characters and the atmosphere that is created through the incredibly stylised and hyper-real methods that the director employs. For me it felt like the future of film-making; a bold combination of every great auteur that has ever stepped behind the camera, but with its own voice and its own personality. For example, the opening image of the film - of our central character suspended in time within a vast, green, ocean-like field of waving reeds - is reminiscent of a number of films, from Shindô's Onibaba (1964) to Tarkovsky's Andrei Rublev (1969) and Malick's Days of Heaven (1978), but combined with that almost Kieslowski-like use of music and the further hints to Godard presented by the use of on-screen inter-titles, which here reveal elements of character background in a way that is entirely fitting to the uncharacteristic world that the film creates.Despite these references, the film never feels like an exercise in imitation, with the director advancing on the influence of these particular filmmakers and creating his own world that seems to exist in a heightened state of almost dreamlike self-awareness. The way that the camera often floats above and around the characters - with those huge locations stretching out endlessly around them - seems to suggest the ideas of alienation and disconnection, whilst also presenting the more interesting idea of characters purposely removing themselves from everything superficial, until only the very essential, natural elements remain. For me, it is one of the few films that really pushes the use of low-grade digital video equipment in a way that enhanced the story; putting it on a par with Lars von Trier's The Idiots (1998), Harmony Korine's Julian Donkey Boy (1999) and Takashi Miike's Visitor Q (2001) as a film that uses the natural abstraction of digital footage to further establish the subjective worldview of the characters. The movement of the camera is constantly suggesting the illusion of freedom or the ability to escape that is contrasted brilliantly against the cramped, dimly lit locations and the use of an uninviting sepia tone to suggest further elements of an expressive visual style tied to the feelings of its characters.It is a film that feels alive with ideas and energy; painting this world of Japanese youth lost and confused as violence and degradation swells all around them. The themes of the film are admittedly bleak, and indeed, the film is certainly an overwhelming and exasperating experience that leaves us breathless and worn. Again, it's partly down to the fantastic visual approach that director Shunji Iwai brings to the film and the way that it complements the thoughts and feelings of the characters and the various obsessions and preoccupations that form the backbone to their world. Understandably for a film that focuses on teenagers the use of music is incredibly important. Here it is as much a character in the film as a tool to tie the scenes together; with the enigmatic persona of Lily casting a massive shadow over the film as she becomes this all encompassing symbol for freedom and expression. The characters talk about music as a life-force and how it comes to represent a kind of ether in which they are helplessly suspended, and in keeping with this notion, the film takes on these elements as well.People need to stop approaching films with a definite idea of what to expect. There are no rules to film-making. No guidelines and regulations that must be followed in order to get a viewer from point A to point B, nor should there be any attempt on the part of the filmmaker to make concessions for an audience unwilling to take an active role in the way the film should be viewed. A film like this requires a sense of collaboration with the audience to think about the presentation of the narrative and the ideas expressed therein; creating a mood and an atmosphere that is reminiscent of Antonioni in the way that the film seems to just drift along, ambient-like, until that staggering final; at which point we're left with not only an overwhelming train of thought, but with a certain heightened perception of the world that is really quite remarkable.

... View More
jmaruyama

When recent footage of Florida teen Victoria Lindsay being attacked by classmates in her home was posted on YouTube, it generated overwhelming public outrage and condemnation. Much debate ensued regarding not only the current state of the youth culture in America but the increasing escalation of teen violence and instances of aggressive bullying particularly "cyber bullying". Nowhere is that more apparent than in Japan, where cases of "ijime" (bullying) have been extreme and notorious. Every year, there are cases of Japanese teens taking their own lives rather than face the daily persecutions from their classmates and tormentors which involve everything from physical and emotional abuse, extortion of money, public humiliation and harassment, and even death threats via cellphone or computer email. In recent years schools have tried to take a more aggressive stance on the problem and recent TV J-Doramas, like the powerful "Watashi Tachi No Kyokashou" and "Life" have also attempted to bring awareness to the issue beyond the classroom.Director Iwai Shunji tackles this sensitive subject in his thought-provoking 2001 film "Lily Chou-Chou No Subete" (All About Lily Chou-Chou). While the title suggests a film detailing the life of the movie's fictional enigmatic and ethereal songstress Lily (singer Salya), the film's actual focus is on childhood friends Shusuke Hoshino and Yuichi Hasumi (portrayed by Oshinari Shugo and Ichihara Hayato) junior high school classmates in the Ashikaga, Tochigi Prefecture. Their aimless and mischievous days are spent in the committing of various acts of petty theft, often instigated by Hoshino (they steal some company bonds from a sleeping old man and shoplift some CDs from a bookstore to sell back to a local pawnshop). It is at this pawnshop that Hasumi encounters a billboard poster publicizing one of the aforementioned singer Lilly Chou-Chou's CD albums. Enamored by the poster, he takes it home with him and quickly discovers the singer's website "Lilyholic", a site devoted to the singer and her eclectic brand of "etheral" music (French Impressionist composer Achille-Claude Debussy and flamboyant Icelandic singer Bjork are named as kindred spirits). Lily's music touches Hasumi in a way that nothing has before and his now hopeless life begins to take some meaning and he develops an almost religious devotion to her music. Yet this happiness soon gives way to a number of hardships. Hasumi is called out by Hoshino and then humiliated and forced to masturbate in public by Hoshio's older friends. He also suffers the trauma of having his beloved Lily CD destroyed by the bullies.We also come to know more about Hoshino's life. While he is blessed with a relatively happy home life with a pampering young mother (played by the fetching Inamori Izumi), a good reputation at school and an active social life with the school's Kendo club, he still can't seem to find much happiness in life.Stealing money from an attempted mugging incident, Hoshino decides to go on a trip to Okinawa with Hasumi and other friends in an attempt to find some sort of spiritual awakening. However, after a near drowning incident and witnessing the suicide attempt of a fellow friendly traveler, he becomes a completely different person. Nihilistic and coldly indifferent to life he soon orchestrates a number of cruel and humiliating acts on fellow classmates - he arranges to have honor student and piano protégé Kuno Yoko (Ito Ayumi) raped at his father's abandoned factor and coerces another student, Tsuda Shiori (Aoi Yu) into "enjo kosai" (arranged dating for money).Hoshino however gets his comeuppance when he cheats Hasumi out of his beloved Lily concert ticket and meets a grim if not tragic end at the hands of his former friend. "All About Lily Chou-Chou" shares a lot of its dark tone with Larry Clark's controversial "Kids" and similarly themed "Bully" movies. Like those movies, Iwai's film portrays adolescent life as being very unforgiving to some especially those who seem weaker and/or different.While Iwai's masterful direction, inventive storytelling and intricately complicated script makes the movie an interesting experience, it is the superb performances from the young cast that are indeed the standout.Oshinari Shugo (Battle Royale II, Aoi Haru) gives a compelling performance as Hoshino. He is certainly a hateful character but he is also a somewhat tragic figure and we can only feel sad to see his character's gradual decline from good natured albeit manipulative tough boy to violent, domineering thug. Ichihara Hayato's (Niji No Megami, Ju-On 2) performance is also equally multi-faceted. His Hasumi in no atypical "emo" character but rather a tortured soul wanting to find some sort of purpose in life. Lily is his "goddress/muse" and her songs act as his "bible" to understanding and dealing with an uncertain world. Aoi Yu (Gaichu, Hana & Alice) delivers another great performance as ill-fated Tsuda Shiori. Aoi has a special knack at making her minor roles standout and that is again the case here. Ito Ayumi's (Swallowtail & Butterfly, Curtain Call) performance as Kuno Yoko is also quite impressive. Ito does admirable work here and it is all the more amazing when one learns that she played all her own piano performances and spent several weeks mastering Debussy's complicated "Arabesque No. 1", one of the song highlights of the film.Cinematographer Shinoda Noboru's beautiful digital camera work was absolutely breathtaking and added an almost dream-like quality to the story. "All About Lily..." is sometimes confusing in its non-linear approach to storytelling and in its novel use of BBS chat inserts that help move the narrative but the somber tone of the film along with the cautionary look at bullying, obsession and indifference deliver a stark and powerful message to the viewer.

... View More