 Written and directed by Satoshi Kon and based upon a novel by Yoshikazu Takeuchi, Perfect Blue is disturbing, to say the least, in both subject matter and execution. Our protagonist, Mimarin Kirigoe, is a pop idol who, much to the disdain of her countless fans, abruptly abandons her singing career in favor of acting. She nabs a part in a new television mystery series, unaware that one of her less wholesome fans, a terminally ugly and obsessive basement-dweller calling himself Me-Mania, has begun stalking her and, in his own perverse way, protecting her – as Mima discovers when a rowdy fan who threw soda cans at the stage during her final concert is killed in a car accident soon after.
Mima’s paranoia is vindicated when she discovers an Intra-net computer machine web site screen called FearDotCom.com – uh, wait, it’s called Mima’s Room, and it exposes bits and pieces of her private life, gathered and organized by someone who has apparently been following her every step. As Mima’s acting career becomes increasingly sleazy, culminating in a near-traumatic nightclub rape scene made more unbearable by a series of technical difficulties, the former idol begins to lose her grip on reality, and becomes prone to hallucination and frequent blackouts. Her friend Rumi is devastated by the unwholesome turn her career has taken, her former band members think she’s a slut and Me-Mania is turning up with increasing regularity at her film shoots.
 The plot takes a macabre turn when her coworkers begin turning up dead. The screenwriter is found in an elevator with his eyes gouged out, and a photographer who used her in a sleazy photo shoot is mutilated in his living room. Mima’s bubble of fear bursts when she discovers blood-soaked clothes stuffed into a shopping bag in her closet.
Perfect Blue is a film about voyeurism, and as such it makes us squirm on numerous occasions. It’s sordid, to be sure, and sometimes even borders on the gratuitous – as is Kon’s intent. He makes us into the voyeur’s eyes. We see everything that happens in Mima’s room, in her everyday life, in her career, and it’s intensely unsettling. By the end of the film the audience almost feels sleazy. Equally effective are Kon’s masterful juxtapositions between Mima’s pop world and mundane reality – exemplified by my favorite shot in the film, in which a bus displaying a pink-haired, doe-eyed anime girl moves out of the way to reveal a trio of ugly teenagers.
 Nonetheless, Perfect Blue is not without its faults. With a runtime of just over eighty minutes, it might have taken an extra ten to flesh out the third act a bit more. We’re not given to sympathize with Mimarin on a personal level. She’s uptight, coddled, naïve and not a bit stupid, and we only feel for her as we would for anyone saddled with her set of unfortunate circumstances. The most frightening scenes involve Mima to a marginal extent – the most notable being the sequence in which the screenwriter is stalked through a parking garage and murdered in an elevator between floors. Perfect Blue is certainly a film worth watching – perhaps even deserving of the various comparisons to Hitchcock pointed out by numerous big-name Western directors, including B-movie mogul Roger Corman.
A little-known fact about Perfect Blue – director Darren Aronofsky, in Requiem for a Dream, included a scene taken frame for frame from Satoshi Kon’s thriller. When Kon called him out on it, Aronofsky claimed he was paying homage to Perfect Blue. Kon reputedly told him, “Don’t.”
 Here’s where I subject you all to Doom’s new and tyrannical anime ratings system! I will be rating films in CURSES TO RICHARDS! Only the best of the best will receive ten curses, while something like Lensman that’s been festering at the bottom of the barrel for a week and growing hairy gray mold will escape my curses and allow Richards to walk free, simply because it’s not worth Doom’s time.
Doom gives Perfect Blue EIGHT CURSES TO RICHARDS! And, because doom had not devised this system when he wrote his last review, Doom gives Jin-Roh TEN CURSES TO RICHARDS! CURSE YOU, RICHAAAAARDS!! |
