
The climax isn’t really a climax at all, just another bump on these kids’ road to maturity and adulthood. It’s a very tenuous thread, and the film’s climax is minimized to near-inconsequence by a myriad of other things going on. The only constant throughout is the teen’s fascination with Lily and their anonymous online rants about what her music means to them. On the OTHER hand, “All About Lily Chou Chou” is essentially plotless. I felt like I was actual witness to some of the events in the movie, but was ultimately powerless–as Yuichi often is–to affect any of it. The handhelds really did manage to draw me in further than I would have been otherwise. The many scenes shot with handheld cameras made me feel like I was tagging along with these kids, whether on an ill-fated vacation to Okinawa or an assault on one of their classmates.
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It’s very cinema verite in feel and I had to remind myself on ocassion that the movie wasn’t a documentary. I also enjoyed the way “All About Lily Chou Chou” was shot. It’s easy to see why these kids would be so captivated by her music. Both the faux pop songs by the fictional Lily and the haunting score are a delight. As soon as the movie was finished I went online to track down its soundtrack (and in the process discovered that some of “Lily Chou Chou’s” score, by composer Takeshi Kobayashi, made its way into Quentin Tarantino’s “Kill Bill Vol. His transition from often picked-on stellar student to being a brutal bully himself is one of the more tragic aspects of the film, yet also one of its most captivating.Īnd the music? Is incredible. He plays Shusuke Hoshino, whose ascent into young adulthood the movie also chronicles. Shûgo Oshinari (“Battle Royale II”) is fantastic as well. He doesn’t have a ton of dialogue in the film, but he manages convey that array of emotions we all felt when we were 12- and 13-years old–those first pangs of arousal, angst, jealousy, fear, humility and anger. Particularly impressive is Hayato Ichihara (who was only 12 when filming began on “All About Lily Chou Chou”) as Yûichi Hasumi, the quiet, slightly nerdy and often bullied Lily fan. The performances are wonderful across the board. It’s perfectly symbolic of the movie’s wayward, lawless and seemingly parentless teens who are tethered to the world around them only by the ethereal music of singer Lily Chou Chou. The shot of young Yuichi in his school uniform listening to his CD player in a field of tall green grass is haunting and gorgeous in its composition. On one hand, it’s a beautiful film, filled with gorgeous images of rural Japan. At the same time one of Lily’s fan sites, “liliphilia,” suddenly stopped working.All About Lily Chou-Chou | Blu-ray (Film Movement)Ĭast: Hayato Ichihara, Shugo Oshinari, Ayumi Ito, Takao Osawa, Miwako Ichikawa, Izumi InamoriĪs I sit here typing this review I’m still trying to figure out whether I like “All About Lily Chou Chou” or not. They are trying to decide what affect Lily’s music has on her fans, and they also talk about a case, now several years old, concerning a murdered secondary school student. The films starts off with a Lily Chou-Chou chat site called Lilyholic where fans are hotly discussing the singer. Lily Chou-Chou is giving a concert on December 8, 2000, and Yuichi is understandably very excited. But thanks to Lily Chou-Chou Yuichi meets the meets the Blue Cat, the only one who really understands him. That’s when Yuichi finds Lily Chou- Chou and he draws strength from her. After beating up and even humiliating the one-time school bully, he becomes the head of his own gang and unbelievably picks out Yuichi as one of his victims.
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They were the best of friends and spent every free moment together. He had still never heard of Lily Chou-Chou and he had become friends with Hoshino. The year before Yuichi had been perfectly happy. All day long he keeps to his room managing a web fan club on Lily Chou-Chou called “liliphilia.” One day “philia,” (Yuich’s Internet handle) encounters another passionate Lily fan on the site named the “Blue Cat”. During this difficult period, the popular singer Lily Chou-Chou is the only thing that matters to him, and only her songs help him to survive. At school he is a daily victim of bullying and abuse and his life is hell.
