Perfect Blue review
review by Cherokee Summer
Anime: 'Pefect Blue' is a 1998 Japanese animated psychological thriller directed by Satoshi Kon. As a j-pop idol changes her career to actress, she displeases her fans - and a stalker - to the point where reality and fantasy blur...
Not all anime is cute. Perfect Blue [1999] [DVD]
Our apologies: We could not find a Perfect Blue trailer with subtitles... and the dubbed ones were too annoying. So we chanced upon this BRILLIANT trailer which is hugely evocative of what the film is about. It's not too explicit but will touch upon some quite sexually predatory stuff, so please don't watch if you know you might find that excessively disturbing.
A chirpy J-Pop tune opens Perfect Blue, the late Satoshi Kon's (Millennium Actress, Paprika) directorial debut where we're introduced to the happy-go-lucky femme fatale Mima, a singer in the super-kawaii band CHAM!
As Mima and her fellow group bounce across the stage in Lolita style costumes to adoring fans – who are clearly middle aged men – we cut to Mima's ordinary, almost mundane life, as she travels on the train and walks the aisles of her local supermarket.
When we join CHAM! back on stage, Mima shyly admits that this will be her last performance with the band as she intends to leave her pop idol persona behind to become a 'rookie' actress.
When the credits roll, you wished that Mima had stuck with her sickly sweet band CHAM! for her own sake.
After a one liner performance on detective TV-Drama, 'Double Bind', Mima's manager enforces that the best way for her acting career to blossom is for Mima to wipe clean her childlike persona and take on more adult roles.
To up her actor credibility and finally get rid of her clean image, Mima takes the risqué role she is offered, where she has to act out a rape scene. Not helped by a mysterious fax reading 'traitor', a website set up by Mi-Mania- Mima's own private stalker who follows her every move- and her own former 'pop idol' self tormenting her, it's not long before reality and fantasy blur together and become one in the same
.Queue what Satoshi Kon does best – messed up shit.
Mima's sanity is lost and as she descends into madness, so do we, questioning what reality is and what is fantasy and invention.
Comparisons to Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho and Dario Argento's techniques of suspense and horror are inevitable. Perfect Blue is chilling to the core – with an ending you wouldn't have seen coming a mile off.
Perfect Blue has not just been influential in animation, but in filmmaking. Perfect Blue has been optioned for a remake by Darren Aronoksy (Pi, The Wrestler) who imitated the 'bath sequence' seen in Perfect Blue in his own film, Requiem for a Dream. Satoshi Kon has garnered a cult following with the likes of Christopher Nolan (The Dark Knight) citing him as an inspiration for his latest Paprika-influenced offering, Inception.
If you have seen anything more disturbing then this, then I worry for your sanity – seriously. Perfect Blue is one of those films where, when it ends, you can still feel the chill running up and down your spine and let's face it – there aren't a lot of films that leave you with that feeling.
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Cherokee Summer is your average, run-of-the-mill teenager who can't take a decent photo of herself without looking like a deranged crappier version of a 12 year old Leather Face. On a film note, since the tender age of ten, Akira has remained Cherokee's all-time favourite film, and her love for it will cause her to idiotically get her first tattoo of Kaneda's bike on her hand. Indeed, a very smart move.
