You have to follow the script

Note: I did the unholy and watched this on my laptop, meaning screen capping would've been a nightmare. The photo used is ripped straight from Google.



My forays into animated cinema are few and far between. I think the last animated film aimed for "adults" that I saw was Grave of the Fireflies which made me bawl/question humanity/the works. Needless to say I hold no grudge against the medium, I simply don't get around to seeing as many of these films as I should.

Satoshi Kon's Perfect Blue fits in amongst most solid suspense thrillers to come out within the past 20 years, though it isn't flawless. The story is simple enough. Mima, a pop idol, quits her job in favor of acting. She soon realizes she's being stalked and fears for her life while simultaneously suffering an identity crisis as she questions her career, watching its rocky start.

Perfect Blue is rare these days in that naivete towards technology pushes its plot. Mima is clueless to being stalked until her manager, Rumi, helps her buy a computer (and a beast of one, size wise) and set up an internet connection. She enters a URL a fan sent her, leading to Mima's pseudo-journal, recording all of her actions that day (or what her crazed fan believes she should've done that day, anyway). I guess it was just interesting to be brought back to memories of the Internet in its infancy (in terms of being a household luxury, at least) and how intimidating and exciting it seemed.

I'd imagine that any semi-suspicious film-goer will be able to call out Mima's harasser from early on. Obvious false leads are only fun when they're so obvious that you disregard them and then feel like an idiot when they weren't false leads at all. In one of the film's first sequences, we are introduced to Me-Mania and we know he's a creep because...he looks like one! He's got beady eyes, his teeth are fucked up, he has that whole skeevy heavy breathing going on. He also seems to be everywhere that Mima is professionally. Scenes of him overhearing everyday conversations about Mima occur 2 or 3 times. It's even revealed that he's behind the shady website! Then, a-ha! He's not the killer. Shocking! Really.

The whole story concerning the stalker quickly becomes much less interesting than Mima's own psychological problems. I think I uttered "the fuck?" to myself 3 times when her dreams began to fade into her reality. The sequences of this are on par with, if not better than, some in most effective psychological thrillers today. Kon leaves the truth of the matter completely ambiguous, which seems less satisfying, but is far more enthralling than if it'd been explained. It's tough to make a viewer feel completely disoriented about time and reality, but Kon completely succeeds with these scenes.

And then he ruins it with that ending. Oh, that ending. Like I've said, I wasn't surprised when the murderer was revealed and a standard chase scene ensues. One thing I appreciated here was the use of Mima's alter ego (visions of her former pop-idol self taunt her throughout the film). While the mirage had previously seemed slightly hackneyed, the image of it gracefully skipping after a frantic Mima through deserted Tokyo was surprisingly effective and the first time in the film that it worked at being creepy. It was much better than watching the killer just run after her, anyway.

I would've preferred if the film had closed with the end of this sequence, but instead there's a tacked on hospital scene and an even worse, cheery "I'm okay afterall!" ending. As baffling as it was, it still doesn't outweigh how enjoyable the rest of Perfect Blue was. Solid 90s suspense. I'm looking forward to checking out Kon's other work.

Note: Don't eat while watching this. I decided to tuck into some leftovers and then that murder scene (you know what I'm talking about if you've seen this) came on and...ugh. Serves me right.

Up next, Days of Heaven!