PERFECT BLUE
Directed by Satoshi Kon
Based on the Novel by Yoshikazu Takeuchi
Rex Entertainment/Manga Entertainment
The modern cult of Celebrity is a terrible, divisive thing. It's a meatgrinder,
drawing in otherwise talented, beautiful people, and churning out emaciated, sexless drones whose only real cultural contribution is to distract us momentarily from our ennui…when they're not appearing on So? Graham Norton.
While the prospect of fame, fortune, and huge amounts of public affection might seem like a great way to spend your life, Celebrity comes with a terrible price: you no longer belong entirely to yourself. It's a bit like suddenly becoming a parent: you can't get a minutes peace, and people appear to want to throw runny shit at you from all angles.
And heaven help you if you try to change your image, or even your job description. The media (and by extension, the public) will tear you to pieces for even daring to contemplate breaking out of the little box that they had put you in.
Perfect Blue is a harrowing example of what can happen to a person who dares to betray her beloved audience.
Mima Kirigoe is the lead singer with a girl band called Cham, but she harbours aspirations of becoming an actress. So, against the wishes of her fans, and the advice of her manager, Mima leaves Cham, in order to join the cast of a psychological soap opera. The line between fantasy and reality is blurred when one fan begins stalking Mima, gathering information for a very unofficial website (predating the weblog by about five years), and the plot of the soap opera and the course of Mima's life start to parallel each other in the most terrifying way.
Perfect Blue examines the dichotomy inherent in the cult of Celebrity: the contradictions fostered by the adoption of a public and a private persona. It examines the effects of being overly keen to serve the public persona, as opposed to the person behind the mask. And finally, it examines the deleterious effect that this might have on the performer and the people around them.
Perfect Blue is a raw, disturbing film. The parallels between the Mima's soap opera character and Mima herself become so overwhelming that there are times when you might have to stop and think about whether you're watching the "real" Mima, or the acting Mima. The story is extremely well written in this regard. It's also a fascinating and all-too-believable study of obsession: of fanaticism in its truest form. Watching the way that some characters build up powerful relationships with Mima, just in their own head, is fascinating. The overwhelming, unhealthy sense of betrayal, envy and disappointment is thick and palpable.
Watching Mima's personality collapse is heartrending and compelling: she gets to a point where she doesn't know where she ends and the construct - the rictus smile, the perkiness - begins. In order to propel her new career direction, Mima allows herself to be talked into a fairly horrific, and entirely gratuitous, rape scene. This sequence is a subversive piece of storytelling: unrelentingly vile, with a room full of perverts watching with lascivious pleasure, and yet, as the frequent cuts in the scene suggest, it's surprisingly matter-of-fact. Like they do that sort of scene everyday.
At least, that's how it appears on the surface.
If nothing else tugs at your heartstrings, Mima's grief at being unable to do or say anything which might endanger her public persona - and her earning potential - will upset you.
Perfect Blue pulls no punches. It is expertly animated, well paced, and faintly terrifying. It's a hard film to watch, and not at all for everyone. However, if you have the stomach for it, Perfect Blue is one of the most effective psychological dramas of recent times.
Violent and unsettling, Perfect Blue should be mandatory viewing for every pathetic Boyzone wannabe, Page 3 model and reality TV applicant. Be careful what you wish for, it says. Because, no matter how much fame, wealth and power you acquire, sooner or later, you're going to have to face yourself in the mirror.
Whether or not it's a face you can stand to look at is entirely up to you.
Review text (C) Matthew Craig
Originally published in the pop culture magazine Robot Fist