All About Lily Chou-Chou

Headnote

SHUNJI IWAI, JAPAN, 2001

Pop-idol worship replaces faith in All About Lily ChouChou, Shunji Iwai's meditative rhapsody devoted to disaffected Japanese youth and the culture that satiates it. For Iwai's troubled protagonists, the music of Bjork-like pop star Lily Chou-Chou is their means of release and escape, their only refuge in an increasingly hostile environment. Yet we never actually see Lily in the flesh-she remains peripheral to the narrative, a divine phantom that is just out of reach, but unites the teens in their unspoken grief.

Iwai's pristine HD digital camera opens on what will be the film's recurring image: a teenager standing alone in a wideopen, sun-dappled field, headphones covering ears, Lily's voice blocking out the world. Within this expansive rural setting, Iwai follows a group of spiritually isolated teenagers through three years of junior high school. We meet the sad-eyed Yuichi (Hayato Ichihara), who, after an embarrassing attempt to...