I guess it was when Darren Aronofsky‘s Requiem for a Dream (2000) came around that I first heard of Perfect Blue, like most, learning how he’d been influenced by the Japanese animated thriller, even homaging a scene, directly lifted from the film. I put it on my “list of movies to watch” back then and well, time got a better hold of me. And I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but there’s like, a whole lot of movies.
So here it is, some twenty-odd years later, and FINALLY, I gave this thing a watch (thank you Amazon Prime). I’ll say right away, it’s better even than I expected, and while it takes a long ten or so minutes before that “better than” kicks in, when it does, this is a superb piece or art with a troubling story, a sensational art style, and a host of questions when it’s over. Fan or not of the genre, this is one to get on your own list.
The story centers on a young Japanese pop idol named Mima. She’s fronts the all-girl group CHAM!, and after two and half years of success, wants to try her hand at acting, something her management team, which features a woman named Rumi–herself an ex-J-POP star–push for. On stage, Mima makes the announcement to a shocked audience, including a super-fan named Me-Mania, who, we discover, is also stalking her. But for love or malice? And is there a difference?
After the show, in Mima’s apartment, Rumi shows Mima a website called “Mima’s Room”, which feature diary entries that are written by someone telling Mima’s life story from Mima’s perspective. To us, it’s creepy but to Mima, it’s cute, though she soon realizes that they are very accurate and could only be written by someone who is very closely watching her. Rumi pleads with her to ignore the internet and more so, not to accept an expanded part in her first acting role, one that would require her to be part of a brutal rape scene. Mima takes the part anyway, wanting to prove herself a good actor, but the experience is deeply traumatic, including nudity and intense scrutiny from the film crew.
Okay, so here’s where the film takes its turn and begins to spin a wild tale of deep psychological drama, leading Mima on a profound journey that leaves her–and the audience–to constantly wonder which is real which is not. Using clever visuals and auditory clues, Mima is subject to a series of bizarre moments that she begins to confuse as to whether it is part of the film she is making or actually happening to her. It’s truly trippy, the animation always testing our own sense of what we are viewing.
Perfect Blue is directed by Satoshi Kon, who is behind my favorite film in the genre so far, and here again, he experiments with our trust in reality, as well as the main characters. While this film is less polished than his other works, it is a staggering effort and I think because maybe it is a little rough looking, it adds to the depth of the mystery. For instance, in many scenes, especially in crowds, many have no faces at all, and while I initially thought that reflected poorly on the look of the film, believing it sort of cheap, I quickly found it more disconcerting, the facelessness of them part of the theme of the story. In fact, the films actually improves visually the more it progresses because the story arc throws us into a kind of narrative chaos. What is happening? Who is behind it? How much can I believe?
The movie is dark, deeply so. The infamous rape scene is a disturbing bit of animation that Kon surely understood would be so, and while one might think it wears out its welcome and goes too far, it’s essential in establishing much that follows. The fact that we know it’s part of a story inside the story, where Mima is only acting on a film set, doesn’t for a moment lessen the stress it causes in watching it happen. There’s even a break in the scene where the director calls for a camera reset and the actor “raping” Mima leans in an apologizes to her. We feel it extends to us as well. But more so, you begin to see that the film itself is hatching its larger message about the industry’s treatment of women and young talents. On stage as an idol or on camera as an actor, they are molested by a system that views them as profit property not people.
That aside, Perfect Blue is a terrific cinematic experience, even on the small screen. Fluid and colorful, rich in layers and avenues of interpretive exploration, it’s a powerful experience. That’s helped a lot too by the Japanese voice acting (please do not listen to anything dubbed). Junko Iwao‘s delicate and often gripping work as Mima is the centerpiece, gifting the character with a worrying naivety that makes much of this all the more affecting.
The film is set in the late 90s, when the Internet was still in its toddler stages, the idea of a personal computer in every home not yet a thing, so it’s fun to watch a scene where Rumi teaches a disinterested Mima how to navigate the Web. I liked too moments on a train, and many uses of reflections, which Kon is very good at. I really liked an image of a man (above) that speaks much to what corrupts him. And of course, the fish. There is a lot hiding in this film, and while it’s violent and harrowing, it’s also beautiful and stirring, with a final line that can be and mean whatever it is you take away from your interpretation.