High on the Ether of Lily Chou-Chou
All about Lily Chou-Chou is an odd film. I find two types of oddness that run through the Japanese live-action movies in my collection: there’s the energetic, mad type of odd that drives the likes of Survive Style 5+ and the back catalogue of Takashi Miike and there’s the gentle, whimsical oddness of, say, Tony Takitani. Lily Chou-Chou falls in the second category. It’s not frenetic and off-the-wall, but its narrative has a shuffled chronology that jumps back and forth and there are some scenes that are quite shocking; it takes on some familiar issues but the execution is both beautiful and highly unconventional.
I mentioned the film to Bateszi absolutely ages ago; I recommended it to him by reputation before I’d seen it for myself (the same approach has given me a couple of other titles, namely Tokyo Sonata and Audition that are on the ‘to watch’ shelf, and two more in the form of Funky Forest: First Contact and Taste of Tea that I’m planning on picking up). I wish I hadn’t left it so long.
