neumu [ cinematronic ]




	All About Lily Chou-Chou
	Shunji Iwai Hayato Ichihara, Shugo Oshinari 2001		As turbulent as a typhoon, "All About Lily Chou-Chou" is a fresh, unconventional film from Japan that delves into the pop-culture fanaticism, sleazy extracurricular activities and vicious, clannish pecking order of a crowd of teenage Japanese students. The camera follows the daily struggles of timid, alienated schoolboy Yuichi (Hayato Ichihara). Bullied by his peers and squelched by his family's expectations of him, Yuichi's only solace is his unconditional love of enigmatic pop singer Lily Chou-Chou — a devotion manifested in his impassioned online entries at a Lily fan Web site. But there's no escaping the cold, calculating manipulations of the school's most mean-spirited gangleader, a junior tyrant who imperiously steers his minions into criminal behavior. Director Shunji Iwai uses title cards depicting Internet chat-room dialogue throughout the movie as a Web-logging Greek chorus and as footnotes to the action. Whether Lily's real or fictional, her heady brew of transcendent balladry and techno-pop offers a gentle counterpoint to Yuichi's anti-social ramble. A soundtrack album is worth seeking out.