Hindsight

My Saturday was not so relaxed. The morning consisted of getting my car jump started, driving back home to La Verne, noticing the copper sky and then realizing that fires were breaking out all over southern California, and spending the rest of the day fixing my nephew’s PC and cursing over setting his computer over wireless network.

Today, Sunday, seemed a little better. Daylight savings time ended, allowing me an extra hour to stay up and tend to my web hobbies.

And then I popped in “Lily Chou-Chou no Subete”, or “All About Lily Chou-Chou“. A film by Shunji Iwai.

I’ve not seen Iwai’s previous works, but I can relate to this one on several levels.

“All About…” revolves around the world of Japanese junior high school students. The bullying, confusion, peer pressure. And a few other Japanese JHS phenomenon. Well, mostly the darker side if it exists in the kids’ lives. On top of this is the connection of every character to Lily Chou-Chou (Riri Shushu as pronounced by the cast). Her music creates a web (pun intended) of interaction between everyone. The film ends in an anti-climax which I found satisfying. But that’s just me.

I wanted to see this film when I heard about it sometime a year and a half ago. Recently it showed up on eBay: it was officially released in Hong Kong. I got my hands on a region 3 copy. The transfer is a little dim, but generally acceptable. The subtitiles are pretty decent - I never found myself doing any major double takes trying to re interpret any badly translated text

Because a lot is taped on school locations, I found myself nodding or smiling when I saw something familiar. Namely, a rebellious school kid here and there, or the uniformity of the gym (I really do think that most school gyms I’ve seen in Japanese junior high schools look exactly the same). So those who have had some experience seeing school life in Japan will see glimpses here.

Opinions are mixed. Still…

For a film that is full of sadness, it was extremely uplifting for me.