I do hope, in the next coming entries, you can see some progress, if minute.
I therefore do not wish to scrutinize too much where I cannot fully grasp the scope of the issue, which I am aware is there. Where Japanese cinema is far behind in representation, I do feel its creative ideals and its ingenuity has reached out to many, speaking to many such as myself and been eye-opening where many films in the western canon have failed. As I have said, these films are ones I have enjoyed immensely and I feel are beginning to show some progress in representation. There are other things missing from Japanese cinema that I have a minimal education or knowledge in with regard to politics, race, disability, sexuality and mental health within the country. What a beautiful realization to end such an incredibly bleak film with.Where last time I discussed gender, it is here I want another opportunity to discuss further diversity and representation within Japanese cinema. Realizing something shared between our experience and the experiences of the people around us. We reach out to each other in intangible ways and find some communion between us all, no matter what we may have done, no matter who we are on Earth. And her listeners are all brought together by it. But Lily brings the Ether into her music. And in doing so she fails to reach out across an impassable lacuna of stress and anxiety. Try harder, the teacher says to her student. It is man's longing for this absolute good that connects them all through this external reality. I'm reminded of Simone Weil, who proposed the existence of a reality beyond this world, an absolute good. Lily is a constant in an equation with a million other variables. How does everything go wrong so quickly? By manipulating the flow of time, Iwai communicates these feelings quite effectively.Īnd then there is the music. Sometimes we don't know how it all happens when we're growing up. As the details of why the characters change are revealed, we discover the causes to the effects we have seen, and vice versa. The discontinuous and non-linear storyline smashes the present into the past, and highlights this inner turmoil. We see what happens when this reconciliation fails and our characters enter a period of turbulence. The movie, then, is about reconciling this identity of who we know we want to be with who we really are. We have no idea who is who (though we can guess) until the end. It is anonymous, totally safe as a blank state for the construction of the best versions of ourselves and for venting and ranting as well. But Lily Chou-Chou has these identities already established in its online world, where characters can present the best versions of themselves. Many coming-of-age films use a search for personal identity as a transitional motivation. The sexual objectification in the first sequence becomes cruelty and sexual violence in the second.
ALL ABOUT LILY CHOU CHOU LOST FOOTAGE MOVIE
The same camera in the movie is used to say two different things about the characters behind them. This is surely a before and after comparison. In terms of tone, the first is like a fever dream, and the second is nauseating, the extreme shakiness of the camerawork paralleling violent struggle. There are two sequences in Lily Chou-Chou that consist of lo-fi handheld footage stitched together, as characters film what happens around them. Korine exposes an overt trashiness in his characters and their settings, Iwai hides it so that when it comes through, it poisons us slowly but the end result is a realization that this clean, clean world has pushed all lits insecurities and pressures onto its people.
Iwai brings a sterility to Lily Chou-Chou that offsets its tragic and repulsive subject matter. They are both more concerned about tone and feeling and texture than having a conventional narrative.īut Korine's world is peeling and moldy and rotten at the edges. Shunji Iwai channels Harmony Korine here, or at least that's how I felt. It is not without flaws but I found it moving and very interesting, and I think it's worth your time. The coming-of-age genre is quite saturated but Shunji Iwai brought something new and daring to the table with All About Lily Chou-Chou. NOTE: Parts of this come from my Letterboxd review.