All About Lily Chou-Chou
Dir: Shunji Iwai
2001
****
First off, All About Lily Chou-Chou looks beautiful. The way it switches from digital to 35mm is brilliant and adds a different element to the which is best argument. The direction, cinematography and editing are great, and the non-linear narrative works quite well even though I'm not always a fan. The music is also suitably haunting, an important thing to get right considering the subject matter and it took some time to get the 'I see you, you see me' song out of my head. It's only real problem, and unfortunately it's a big one, is that it drags on for far too long and, well, how do I put this, no one does teenage angst as unconvincingly as the Japanese. Harsh I know, but I just can't stand Japanese high-school dramas, I find them annoying and unrealistic. I still found it an enjoyable experience though, the visuals being the main attraction.