Review: Perfect Blue (1997)
Richard Scheib
Japan. 1997. Director - Satoshi Kon, Screenplay - Sadayuki Murai, Based
on Character Design by Hisashi Eguchi, Based on the Novel by Yoshikazu
Takeuchi, Producers - Hiroaki Inoue & Masao Maruyama, Planning - Koichi
Okamoto & Yoshikazu Takeuchi, Photography - Hisao Shirai, Music -
Masahiro Ikumi, Animation Director/Character Design - Hideki Hamazu,
Production Design - Mitsusuke Hayakawa, Special Adviser - Katsuhiro
Otomo. Production Company - Mad House/Oniro.
Plot: Mima Kirigoe takes the risky move of quitting as a member of the
girl pop trio Cham to pursue an acting career with a part in a tv
detective series. But the part only proves to be a minor one and Mima is
forced to accept playing rape scenes and appearing in a nude magazine
layout to sustain herself, while the other two girls take Cham on to
great success. At the same time Mima is disturbed to find every detail
of her life is being reported as a faked diary on an Internet website.
As her spirits sink, she finds herself haunted by a doppelganger which
taunts her with what her life could have been if she had not chosen this
path.
The name of Katsuhiro Otomo casts a giant shadow over anime. Otomo
directed `Akira' (1987) which, with its epic-sized vistas of mass
destruction, succeeded in becoming a huge cult hit and whetting Western
audiences' appetite for anime. It also made Otomo the only anime name
that is recognizable to Westerners - and the subsequent attachment of
his name to any project has been enough to carry it to the West.
Although what may have escaped notice of those who flock to the Otomo
name is that Otomo has only really directed one film other than `Akira'
- `World Apartment Horror' (1991) - something which seems incredible
considering the size of the shadow Otomo casts over anime. He has
directed segments of other films like `Robot Carnival' (1986) and
`Memories' (1995), but the greatest Otomo successes - `Rojin Z' (1991),
`Memories' and this - have ironically been ones that wave Otomo's name
above them but little else. Here Otomo's credit remains the rather
nebulous title of `Special Adviser' which nevertheless seems to be
enough for it to still be promoted as an Otomo film.
`Perfect Blue' turns away from the usual thematic territory for an
Otomo-associated film - Cyberpunk futures and epic-vistas of mass
destruction - and is in fact a psycho-thriller. It starts in rather well
- there is a marvelously spooky moment where the heroine, after some
amusingly comic moments trying to learn how to use a computer, accesses
a website only to discover the minutiae of her day is being reported in
elaborate detail in a series of faked diary entries written as though by
her. The story all-too-believably details the fall of an aidoru
(Japanese pop star) who takes an artistic risk in becoming an actress,
fails to succeed as expected and is gradually forced into filming
gratuitous rape scenes and modelling nude in order to sustain herself,
all the while seeing her former partners prospering. In these scenes the
film manages to convey a portrait of the downfall of a fragile innocent
with considerable conviction.
But unfortunately about halfway through the film becomes somewhat
incoherent with the plot becoming a tangle of strands involving the
heroine having to deal with her Internet stalker; being haunted by a
taunting doppelganger who claims to be her alternate self had she stayed
with the group and gone on to success; as well as someone assassinating
the people around her. When the film then starts to get into her having
memory blackouts and missing days and having scenes in the tv show start
oddly mirroring events in her life, it becomes difficult to follow what
is meant to be going on. However the film then momentarily pulls back
and in a plotting twist of dazzling ingenuity suggests that the role of
the actress is really a split personality created by the heroine to deal
with the stress of being a pop star, that the doppelganger is her real
self emerging through and that the tv show is a projection of the
repressed memories of an abusive childhood. It is a moment of
crystalline clarity in which all of the hanging confusions up to that
point suddenly make perfect sense. But then oddly enough the film seems
to back away from this and continues on to an ending where the
doppelganger and assassinations are mundanely revealed to be the mere
machinations of one of the heroine's friends. It's a puzzling denouement
which holds explanations that are actually less convincing than the ones
offered by the multiple-personality disorder twist.
Reviewed at the 1998 Wellington International Film Festival
Copyright Richard Scheib 1998
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