"Perfect Blue" Review - From the Vaults

 Mima Kirigoe is one third of a pop-trio called "CHAM!", but the pop idol wishes to do something more. Thus she leaves the group to become an actress, with the full support of her agent Tadokoro and her band mates Yukiko and Rei, but to enormous public backlash. She begins to receive threatening letters, discovers a website which tracks her every move and pretends to be written by her, and it affects her work on her first project. 

Then people in Mima's life begin to turn up dead, and she struggles to tell what is real and what is fictional...

This is the set-up for "Perfect Blue", the first movie by my favourite director Satoshi Kon. And boy is it a belter.

This movie is a terrifying, delirium inducing rollercoaster that has only gotten better with age. The only thing that dates it is Mima's manager giving her a rundown on how dial up modems work and what a website is: aside from that adorable detail, the idea of celebrity and falsehood, and public perceptions versus one's own identity, have only become more relevant than ever. The editing is incredible: you the audience are thrust into the mind of Mima, or perhaps the killer, as it blends her acting work, her real life and her nightmares together, until you too cannot tell where one ends and another begins, and it becomes very obvious why Mima is being driven mad by all of this. 

The film makers put details into everything, from Mima's adorable flat and what lies within it adding to her character, to the outfits, lighting and camera angles in scenes making it look like a big budget Hollywood production, more accurately an Alfred Hitchcock film. Hell, one of the lazier box quotes says "If Alfred Hitchcock had made a Disney movie" which, yikes guys... Make sure to check out the bonus features too! There's the most wholesome video of the Japanese actresses playing "CHAM!" recording "Angel of Love" and one of them is SO INTO IT it becomes infectious.

The influences it has had on other projects are glaringly obvious (the bathtub scene was ripped straight out of this and placed into "Black Swan") and honestly it is far more ambitious than many films of its time and since. My absolute favourite shot is right at the start:

CHAM! are performing their final concert, and we cut to the view of a creepy fan, who squints and holds up his hand, so it looks as if Mima is dancing and performing in the palm of his hand, like a doll... It's creepy imagery like that which keeps you on edge, blending with the awesome and still comprehensible, clear plot; as it ratchets up and climbs higher and higher to the heights of well-earned bloody insanity and carnage. There's a moment in a lift which, damn son...

I cannot adequately put into words how unsettling and brilliant this shot is

When I showed this to my fiancee, she merely asked "Ari Aster remake when?" and once you see this, you will know why...

It would be remiss of me to mention the eclectic soundtrack, part party bops for CHAM! used to surprisingly creepy effect, part anxiety-attack-condensed-into-a-musical score (holy hell that chase at the end gives me nightmares) which blends together seamlessly despite feeling ripped from different movies. Almost as if it ties into the idea of whiplash and being brought from one reality to another, the worlds of manufactured pop, mental illness and reality colliding...

Yeah, please watch this movie.

Oh! In the dub, Mima is played by Ruby Marlowe, who was the model for the now-infamous poster for "Evil Dead", and Wendee Lee plays her manager Rumi.

(Editor's Note: I'll probably come back to this. Satoshi Kon is my favourite film maker and I want to make a retrospective of everything that he has done)