All About Lily Chou-Chou isn't an easy watch. It's messy, sad, and sometimes uncomfortable, but it's also one of the most honest films about being a teenager I've ever seen.
It’s the misery of this film that really stands out, Shunji Iwai's view on loneliness, on being a teenager in a world that doesn't care if you survive or die. Shunji Iwai showed us a group of middle school students in early 2000s Japan, bullying, betrayal, desperation, all of them connected to the ethereal, otherworldly music of a fictional pop singer named Lily Chou-Chou. She is their getaway, their faith, the only thing that makes sense when nothing else does.
But to describe the plot is near an injustice. Because it's not actually about the story.
This film moves in fragments. White text blinking on a black screen, the chat rooms, anonymous nicknames like “Philia” and “Satie” whispering about Ether and blue skies. Handheld cameras catch scenes that seem too real to be staged: a boy crying in a lush field, a girl alone on a train platform, a kite caught in power lines. The video is blurry. The light is severe. It's not glamorous. It's like somebody's fractured memory of a bad year.
The music is beautiful. Dreamy, floating, sad melodies that will stick in your head for days. You'll want to listen to Lily Chou-Chou even though she's not real.
All About Lily Chou-Chou is upsetting, but not because of the violence. There is violence, uncomfortable and relentless. It's the calm times. A boy steals a cd. A girl faking a chuckle at a joke she doesn’t comprehend, there is so many more ments I could list out but that would spoil how great this piece of art is. The film also recognizes something important: that sometimes the only thing left to connect is art. With a voice that doesn’t know you’re there, yet nevertheless knows exactly how you feel.
It is long. “Two and a half hours almost.” It's rambling. Some sequences are a bit draggy. The broken structure might be annoying. But that’s the whole point of this film, it shows what adolescence seems like, too long, too confused, too much.
The last shot is great. A boy standing on a field at dusk. Pager on the floor. The single note of a piano. And then silence. You'll watch the credits roll. You won’t know what to do with yourself.
A heartbreaking, beautiful film about pain, art, and the things that keep us going when everything else falls apart. Not for everyone. But if it hits you, it hits hard.
All About Lily Chou-Chou isn't an easy watch. It's messy, sad, and sometimes uncomfortable, but it's also one of the most honest films about being a teenager I've ever seen.
It’s the misery of this film that really stands out, Shunji Iwai's view on loneliness, on being a teenager in a world that doesn't care if you survive or die. Shunji Iwai showed us a group of middle school students in early 2000s Japan, bullying, betrayal, desperation, all of them connected to the ethereal, otherworldly music of a fictional pop singer named Lily Chou-Chou. She is their getaway, their faith, the only thing that makes sense when nothing else does.
But to describe the plot is near an injustice. Because it's not actually about the story.
This film moves in fragments. White text blinking on a black screen, the chat rooms, anonymous nicknames like “Philia” and “Satie” whispering about Ether and blue skies. Handheld cameras catch scenes that seem too real to be staged: a boy crying in a lush field, a girl alone on a train platform, a kite caught in power lines. The video is blurry. The light is severe. It's not glamorous. It's like somebody's fractured memory of a bad year.
The music is beautiful. Dreamy, floating, sad melodies that will stick in your head for days. You'll want to listen to Lily Chou-Chou even though she's not real.
All About Lily Chou-Chou is upsetting, but not because of the violence. There is violence, uncomfortable and relentless. It's the calm times. A boy steals a cd. A girl faking a chuckle at a joke she doesn’t comprehend, there is so many more ments I could list out but that would spoil how great this piece of art is. The film also recognizes something important: that sometimes the only thing left to connect is art. With a voice that doesn’t know you’re there, yet nevertheless knows exactly how you feel.
It is long. “Two and a half hours almost.” It's rambling. Some sequences are a bit draggy. The broken structure might be annoying. But that’s the whole point of this film, it shows what adolescence seems like, too long, too confused, too much.
The last shot is great. A boy standing on a field at dusk. Pager on the floor. The single note of a piano. And then silence. You'll watch the credits roll. You won’t know what to do with yourself.
A heartbreaking, beautiful film about pain, art, and the things that keep us going when everything else falls apart. Not for everyone. But if it hits you, it hits hard.
