Perfect Blue (Yume nara
samete)
Director: Toshiki Sato
Year: 2002
Running Time: 101 minutes
Based on a book by Yoshikazu Takeuchi, this
film follows on the footsteps of the much more famous anime version that
came out in 1998 that was directed by Satoshi Kon. Though the same source
material inspires both they are very different in content and style though
they each center on a Japanese idol and her sense of a loss of identity.
The anime is bathed in violence and sexual content while the live version
generally keeps a far distance from both and instead becomes a slow mood
piece that never quite ignites. There is a sense of unease that overlays
everything, but one constantly expects this to turn into something more
visceral but even the very strange turn of events never raises the decibel
level. All the characters go through the film as if in a hypnotic lethargic
state or they have indulged too much at the dinner table.
The adorable Ai-chan (Ayaka Maeda) is a picture
perfect idol in the making with those young girl bright eyed anime features
and her manager, Bando (Masahiro Toda) is doing all he can to foster her
climb up the idol ladder. He has released her poster to some acclaim, but
the next steps are to get her in model layouts, commercials and then the
big leap is to have her release an album. If this all goes well, you have
an idol on your hands and a mint in the bank. He has her pose for one layout
in her underwear, but when the photographer asks her to do various sumo
wrestler stances, they refuse, as this is not the image they want to project.
Ai-chan has a melancholy song in her possession that a friend of hers had
written before she committed suicide by jumping off a building and Bando
feels it is the perfect vehicle to launch her singing career. But there
is a question as to how she really acquired this song and whether she has
the moral right to make her career on her dead friends talent.
Ai-chan goes to a convenience store to ship a
package and makes the acquaintance of the clerk Toshihiko (Nao Omori –
Vibrator, Ichi the Killer) who seems to be a huge fan of hers and has her
poster on the wall. At first Ai-chan is thrilled to have a fan, but she
gets a little uncomfortable when he seems to know everything about her
– things that no one should know – even inner thoughts that she has never
mentioned to anyone. She accuses him of being a stalker – but he swears
that he is not – instead he explains that he “is living her (Kyuugoku no
Ai)”. He explains that he saw her when he was a little boy and decided
to become her – and he has evolved to the extent that he knows what she
is thinking and doing as she does it. Not surprisingly, this freaks her
out and she runs away – but she soon comes face to face with something
even stranger as his evolution progresses - but is this real or is
she imagining the whole thing.
It’s mildly creepy and suggestive, but it never
quite forms into a real movie and the number of times we have to listen
to the song feels very much like an attempt to fill out the time. This
film might have worked better as a part of an anthology coming in at around
45 minutes. The decision to be so tame compared to the anime seems especially
odd in that the director is one of Japan’s best know “pink film” makers
– termed by whoever makes up these terms as one of “The Four Kings”of Pink
films.
My rating for this film: 5.5