This blog entry is part of my “movie year countdown round #2”. Read more about that here.
Riri Shushu no subete (All About Lily Chou-Chou)
Before I watched this I heard it described as a Japanese version of Kids. I like that movie and am interested in Japanese culture, but it didn't turn out to be a very good description in my opinion. I can see where they were coming from, but this movie seemed to be trying to grasp something bigger and profound than Kids. And I generally prefer a movie that keeps it simple to avoid getting to pretentious.
This movie is more about some kind of search for something bigger through hero worship of a musician in this technological age. And the movie is quite long. Almost two and a half hours. The movie often shows text written on internet message boards on the screen, and I had trouble determining which characters on screen corresponded to which characters on the message board. There were some interesting and somewhat compelling moments, but all in all it was difficult to invest in the way the movie was trying to get me to.
The most interesting thing was watching the special features and learning about how the movie was made. It actually started out as a website and message board where people could log on and post and in a way help create the story that eventually was turned into the film.
Rating: 5/10