PERFECT BLUE
SYNOPSIS:
Mima Kiragoe is a twenty-one-year-old Japanese pop idol, loved by
thousands as a member of the girl trio Cham. However, record
sales are on their way down and Mima is advised by her agent to
quit singing and concentrate on her acting, taking a part in a
long-running murder mystery TV series. Privately, however, Mima
feels uncertain about this move, especially after she agrees to
take part in a lurid rape scene; meanwhile, she's being stalked
by an angry fan who resents any change in her squeaky clean image. Things start to spiral out of control as reality and fiction become confused - or is Mima simply cracking up?
Perfect Blue is no ordinary Japanese anime. Spaceships, robots
and mutant demons from hell are nowhere to be seen as the
psychological drama of a pop performer unfolds. The demons are
those in the mind of pop princess Mima whose traumatic tale bears
a co-incidental resemblance to the problems presently facing real-life
diva Mariah Carey. What's striking about this Anime is the
reality in which it is grounded. The story, adapted from
Yoshikazu's story, could easily be told as live action drama (it
was originally planned as such) and contains all the elements of
a Hitchcockian thriller. There are still the kind of action set
pieces we associate with this genre but Perfect Blue is even more
impressive on human levels rarely explored in Japanimation. The
picture of a young pop idol manipulated by her manager into
prolonging a waning career at any cost is the dynamic emotional
core of the film. Mima might be a cartoon character but we feel
for her helplessness as the line between fantasy and reality
becomes dangerously slim. We're also kept guessing - is she going
mad or is there a real conspiracy behind the appearance of the
phantom Mima and the sudden deaths of those around her? As a
comment on the price of fame and as a murder mystery with fantasy
elements, Perfect Blue is a remarkable achievement. Its release
here with subtitles on the big screen (it broke box-office
records at art houses in Japan) is to be applauded and supported.
Richard Kuipers
This excellent animé has taken several years to get a general
release in Australia, but it still seems pretty up-to-the-minute,
showing its age only in the use of the Internet as a novelty plot
device. Simultaneously it's a metaphysical thriller in the vein
of recent virtual reality fantasies (where multiple levels of
fiction collide and become interchangable) and a quasi-feminist
satire on how celebrities let their identities be shaped by the
demands of the media. The clever and economical script brings
these two genres together by examining the way images are
constructed - it's as if Brian de Palma had directed the movie of
Josie And The Pussycats. By Hollywood standards the animation
isn't especially fluid, but the detailed, colourful backgrounds
allow a lot of visual pop culture references as the plot ranges
over the worlds of music, TV, websites and magazines (watch for
the Pokemon poster in the corner of one frame). Reportedly,
Perfect Blue was conceived as a live-action feature, which would
have added an extra level of self-reflexivity to its narrative
games: we would be forced to speculate on whether the actress
playing Mima was genuinely being exploited in, say, the gruelling
rape scene. Told through animation, the same story is both more
abstract and more frightening: any distinction between fantasy
and reality quickly becomes unworkable. There's no direction home
for poor Mima, no way she can sort out her own delusions from the
madness of her society - since from start to finish she has no
self outside a series of equally manufactured images.
Jake Wilson
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CRITICAL COUNT
Favourable: 2
Unfavourable: 0
Mixed: 0
PERFECT BLUE (MA)
(JAP)
VOICES OF: Junko Iwao, Rica Matsumoto, Shinpachi Tsuji, Masaaki
Ôkura
DIRECTOR: Satoshi Kon
PRODUCER: Hiroaki Inoue, Masao Maruyama
SCRIPT: Sadayuki Murai, Yoshikazu Takeuchi (novel)
CINEMATOGRAPHER: Hisao Shirai
MUSIC: Masahiro Ikumi
RUNNING TIME: 75 minutes
AUSTRALIAN DISTRIBUTOR: Potential/Mad Man
AUSTRALIAN RELEASE DATE: August 9 (Sydney), August 23 (Melb)
VIDEO DISTRIBUTOR: AV Channel
VIDEO RELEASE: February 6, 2002
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