All About Lily Chou Chou [Blu-ray]

This film is right up there with Hana & Alice for me. Quite a unique coming-of-age drama. If you are up for a good drama that is a little bit different, I definitely recommend giving this a try. Film Movement's blu-ray has excellent PQ, nice artwork and an insert with a very informative essay. I really like when they go the extra mile to give movie fans top quality releases like this. It is good to know that Criterion and Arrow are not the only two companies capable of delivering these wonderful releases.

this film encapsulates the life sustaining magic of music, how it shapes and keeps us going in times of hardship.. especially in those years of struggle for identity in the face of harsh but ultimately impersonal social forces that hammer us from all sides , attempting to mold us into whatever shape is called for in the zeitgeist . music is the refuge that we go to for restorative solace . sad but beautiful film.

The movie looks beautiful, I feel this version is better than the AppleTv version.

very good movie.

It comes with an hour of a behind the scenes documentary done in a similar style as the movie.

...this is a wonderful film. Fanstastic music, cinematography, acting, and story. A brilliant piece of work from director Shunji Iwai. My favorite film of all time. Buy it. Now. ;)

In early 2010, I found this movie in the low 90s of Adam Jahnke's "Top 100 films of 2000-09," and I rented it, and liked it a lot, for its atmosphere and visual style and music. Soon I went after both soundtracks ( Kokyuu & All About Lily Chou-Chou Original So ). This summer, I thought of the movie again, checked for Blu-Ray (none available yet) and got the DVD. A few reviews here were confusing, about how this particular DVD release (Home Vision Enter't.) was some kind of sub-par travesty of the visual / sonic integrity of the "real" film. To try to be fair, I tried two DVD versions (description and link to other DVD version below**) of the movie to see for myself. I saw no differences between the two, and thought the visuals were all fine, as crisp and clear as they ever needed to be, and the sound was fine on both, too. (Then I read the comments to these disgruntled reviewers, and I agree that there may be something -- unsuspected pirated copy; bad equipment; confusion over the personal digi-camcorder-filmed sequences; unrealistically high cinematic expectations of a digital-era filmwatcher, who knows? -- that colored their views. Maybe I should've gone after yet another version of the DVD [there are at least two others] to truly vindicate their complaints, but someday the Blu-Ray will come along and render all of these complaints mute anyway.) But again, for now, I think the stunning cinematography and artful lighting and the music and soundscapes are presented perfectly. [**FYI, this HVE DVD has more chapter breaks than the other one. This DVD's extras includes a small BTS documentary, a Salyuu music video, an essay by the director, bio / filmography, and trailers. All About Lily Chou has no extras, although the packaging is pretty, with info on the director's career in the paper insert. Although the packaging is Japanese or Chinese, the DVD is Apparently multi-regional...Apparently] The plot and content of this 2001 film is already pretty well described in the product descriptions and the other reviews, so I won't repeat those. So, who is this movie really for? Certainly not a general audience. There are many harsh topics covered / implied in this film, some more vividly than others. (Details in next paragraph) After a personal preview, and depending on your teens' character / attitude, you could conceivably make it the springboard for a major discussion about many aspects of teen life, the hard and the light, the bad and the good. Granted, there's some dark and depressing stuff in this story, but there are also some lighter and more uplifting aspects, too, that almost balance it out. A list of harsh story elements, for those trying to determine whether, how, and who to let watch (brace thyselves): --Extended masturbatory cruelty scene, the action of which is mercifuly off-screen or briefly in very low-light background, but the poor kid keeps going, even after his main tormentors leave --Plenty of "adult" language, name-calling, multiple thefts in various parts --Mild parental abuse early in the film --Many instances of clique-ing and cruel rejection and putting down of outsider kids --A stranger in Okinawa is hit by a motor vehicle; brief shots of road made bloody by his injured head --Post-Okinawa protagonist out-bullies a bully by knocking him off a desk, throwing a chair at him, cutting off a mass of his hair, and treating him like a dog, making him wallow naked in the mud --Suicide implied / corpse / funeral --Mildly-implied instance of the practice of enjo-kosai --Implied rape in abandoned textile factory --Apparent off-screen knife-kill during a stampede/panic --Assorted other cruel acts (these are teenagers, after all, some of them fitting the definition of bullies) Also, aside from the drama, this film can be really trying and confusing on several levels. You have to have subtitles, and it's a very textual film, anyway, with a lot of epiliepsy-inducing chat-room text clacking/flashing across the screen in various sequences. It's a stylish and dramatic movie, low on harmless popcorn-munching action sequences. It's over two hours long, and the pace is often slow enough that you really do feel all of that time passing. (via calmness, boredom, shock, or suspense). There's a temporal dislocation, with the middle part being a long prequel to the rest of the movie. There's a degree of cultural divide, since this is about characters in Japan, with their own customs, terminology, obscure cultural references, and unique practices and problems. (The film's Wiki article, with links to the film's own website, can be quite helpful in this regard.) Even so, most of the main characters are teenagers, going through so many of the various issues and trials of all 21st-century teens across the world. So, would this only appeal to Japan-o-philes, anthropologists/ sociologists, film students, foreign film fans, art film lovers, fans of artier pop music, and various teenagers (for different reasons, despite the more depressing aspects)? I'd like to think the potential appeal of this film can be broader than that, despite the heavier situations, for there is light, life, and beauty in this movie, too.

At first I chalked it up to cultural difference. "Why do I need to watch a film about bad kids in Japan?" I thought. "I was nothing like that; I can't relate to this at all." But I kept watching. The lush colors, the mesmerizing light, the amazing teenage actors all held me in their stories. Then I remembered, yes, this was an awful time...14 years old; insanely alive and confused...I watched the making-of documentary of the internet-novel-turned-film and understood why All About Lily Chou-Chou had won awards from both the 2002 Berlin and Shanghai International Film Festivals. Youth is so often shot with a Vaseline-coated lens on screen and in memory. We all think we were "good kids." Only in passing do we acknowledge the power of the ages between 13 and 15 for the immense potential for vitality and cruelty. But director and writer Shunji Iwai has created a film that shows children as they have power to be. The story is centered around Yuichi Hasumi, told through his alias, philia, in his BBS-style chat-room "Lilyphilia," devoted to the fictional musician, Lily Chou-Chou. It is the "ether" of her music that enchants him-the life-force or chi that flows through her and into the world by her voice and electronic stylings. Debussy, Satie, the Beatles, and Björk are all said to have a similar ether. Between the subtle electronic score of Takeshi Kobayashi and the classic piano solos of Claude Debussy, I understood ether immediately, and the escapist power of this music within Yuichi's chaotic, bullied life. At the same time, there was no pity for him, or for any other character. All are complexly expressive: not the toothpaste-ad acting we've come to expect from teen actors in America. Frustration and injustice flowed beneath control and rage. Bitterness and unrequited longing linger under the happiest expressions. Strength and courage grow in spite of public humiliation. Admiration and servility cover deep fear and inadequacy. Don DeLillo, in his novel, White Noise, understood this when he wrote, "It is all there, in full force, charges waves of identity and being. There are no amateurs in the world of children." All are swimming in their growing bodies, in their malleable identities, their secrets, intense feelings, betrayals; all in the context of a junior high school. This is not about culture shock. This is not about cultural difference. All About Lily Chou-Chou rewires our memories, makes us see our 14-year-old selves as we were: shifting and spinning between angel and monstrosity.

Merci au vendeur

Bester film ever

Jamás creí tener está palicula en mis manos y en Blu Ray, increíble espero vendan más.

Grande film poco noto.

As my title suggests this film doesn't move at the pace of a Shinkansen. However, it's so much easier to lap up the story being told in it's less-than-frenetic pace which makes the ending all the more surprising and out of the blue. Some excellent acting makes it easier to tune into young Yuichi's life. the story is from his eyes and the excruciating problem that many of us can empathise that of shyness but Yuichi is crippled by this, it really does affect all his Life, it made me feel awkward watching him (and as I said before it isn't the acting that's bad, it's actually superb) stumble through Life. There is a bad guy in it, a fellow teen who went completely the other way, from shy to outrageous, it's his behaviour that shadows Yuichi. A truly beautiful film.