It centers on Ichihara, the persecuted protagonist who eventually finds himself atop a group of persecutors. He's in adult situations, but doesn't have adult faculties, and any grown-up that could help him escape the escalating sadomasochism of his friends is too clueless or apathetic to help. Ichihara fixates on Lilly Chou Chou, a figure whom he thinks embodies his disillusionment with his unfolding life. When he finds that his best friend/tormentor shares his love of Lilly Chou-Chou, it's too much for him to take.
In a flashback to their first year at school, fellow student Hoshino (Shugo Oshinari), known on the message boards as Blue Cat, reaches out to Yuichi after being ridiculed in school and both join the Kendo club. When Yuichi spends the night at his house, Hoshino introduces him to Lily. Their friendship shifts, however, after a summer vacation in Okinawa full of strange events in which Hoshino is almost drowned and they witness a serious traffic accident. This fifteen-minute vacation segment, saturated with brilliant color and shot by a jerky hand-held camera, contains the film's most unnerving moments, and we instinctively know that the lives of the vacationers will never be the same.In the next school year, shaken by his near drowning and the loss of his family's textile factory, Hoshino undergoes a drastic personality change. He assaults the school bully, Inubushi and becomes a bully himself, forcing Yuichi to become involved in bullying others, robbery, and running a prostitution ring involving one of their classmates, Shiori Tsuda (Yu Aoi). Sadly, the adults in the story seem helpless and can only respond in an uncomprehending manner. The only response a teacher has to a girl who had her head shaven was to buy her a wig. Yuichi passively agrees to Hoshino's demands but their friendship becomes increasingly strained when he tells him to follow and watch Shiori, a girl that likes him but cannot express her feelings.
All About Lilly Chou Chou is beauty that's sought after. By foregrounding the filmmaking process and complicating the line between pain and pleasure, it forces the audience to be repulsed, enamored, whatever. Presenting the film in traditional cinematic language wouldn't do justice to the depth of the narrative. It's a film for catharsis. Iwai's breathtaking images together with the poetic music of Debussy capture the adolescent experience in a way that is heartbreakingly real and, although the film's shifting time line may makes the story hard to follow for some, the message comes through with unmistakable clarity. Lily is a film of mood where black is the color and none is the number, but the darkness is redeemed by its appreciation that the solace of art is available to all, even those suffering the most desperate pain.
3.5/5
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