All About Lily Chou-Chou

Drama, Music

Hayato Ichihara	Yûichi Hasumi
Shûgo Oshinari	Shusuke Hoshino
Ayumi Ito	Yôko Kuno
Takao Osawa	Tabito Takao
Miwako Ichikawa	Shimabukuro
Izumi Inamori	Izumi Hoshino
Yû Aoi	Shiori Tsuda
Kazusa Matsuda	Sumika Kanzaki
Takako Baba	School girl
Yuki Ito	Kamino
Tomohiro Kaku	Yuichi's friend
Hideyuki Kasahara	Kyota Shimizu
Yoji Tanaka	Teacher
Yu Aoi
Shugo Oshinari

Director	Shunji Iwai
Producer	Koko Maeda
Writer	Shunji Iwai

The pain and suffering of junior high is always good movie fodder, and in All About Lily Chou-Chou the topic gets an unfamiliar and moody airing. Director Shunji Iwai takes a discursive, sometimes baffling look into the life of a bullied kid whose misery is broken by his worship of a pop star, Lily Chou-Chou. Internet chat room exchanges punctuate the film's narrative, as Yuichi and his anonymous Lily-philes share their intoxication with the "Ether"--the mystery of life that Lily's voice somehow illuminates. The film's style (and length) offer little in the way of traditional movie-watching pleasure, and the mystifying storytelling will have some viewers giving up in exasperation. Still, the portrait of adolescent loneliness rings true, and the ferocity of school bullying is laid bare. On the latter subject, this film is a little like the kill-or-be-killed apocalypse of Battle Royale, without the fantasy overlay. --Robert Horton