Perfect Blue

Where to even begin with this movie. It doesn't need a review; it needs a thesis. Let's start with the two flaws I can think of and get them out of the way. One is kinda nitpipcky, and that's that when you find out the big twist in the final act and start trying to square it away with what you've seen in the rest of the movie, it doesn't always work. It's not enough to really dock it a star rating, but it is something I picked up on right away. Perhaps, with this movie's twisty, screwy logic and how it plays with reality, I'm misremembering, and a second watch would clear this up. The bigger flaw is the length. At 81 minutes (before you subtract for the end credits), it goes by in a breeze. But there are issues this movie raises, issues that are central to this movie's themes and story, that could've used an extra 5-10 minutes of exploration. So let's discuss the themes. The story follows Mima, a young woman and a member of a J-Pop band who decides she wants to leave behind the pop idol life and move into acting. A creepy fan (who bears a passing resemblance to Jason Voorhees' design in Friday The 13th Part 2) begins stalking her shoots and her personal life. A website pops up called Mima's Room with a blog that sounds like it's coming from her, but it isn't. Attacks and dead bodies start popping up around her. And she's seemingly haunted by a ghost of herself from her time in the pop band, telling her acting and modeling isn't what she really wants and she's betraying herself and her fans. As all these pressures mount, Mima starts having problems telling the difference between dreams, reality, and the show she's working on. A big theme is the pressure that's placed on women in show business and the how the image affects them (and, to a lesser extent, how that image is consumed by fans). This movie was made decades before #MeToo, and when the internet was a mere fraction of what it is now, and yet it is eerily prescient. Mima wants to be taken seriously as an actress, so she takes a role in a Law & Order-style show that starts off with one line, but her managers use her pop idol status to clout her into a bigger role. The bigger role requires a rape scene in a strip club. She's booked to shoot a glamour photo shoot with a photog that slowly morphs from what you'd see in Esquire to what you'd see in Playboy. Mima goes along with this and insists that it's what she wants, but the blog weirdly echoes the uncertainty she has (and starts gaslighting her too, in a weird way). We've seen these themes echoed in our world; I remember Anne Hathaway's first non-Disney role was marketed not as her first serious turn in drama, but as "Anne Hathaway sheds her Disney image and her top!", and she's far from the first. Drew Barrymore, Christina Ricci, Natalie Wood, all of them and many, many more faced that point where Hollywood said "okay, you're grown up now, time to pivot". Perfect Blue uses that as a vehicle for mind-bending horror; Mima wants to shed her wholesome, bubble-gum image and be taken seriously, but does it have to be done by swinging the pendulum to the most extreme opposite direction? Now that she's a "serious actress", is her worth derived only from her body and how much of it she shares? Can she maintain that connection to the fans she loves when she is now portraying the exact opposite of who she was? And can she live with herself and maintain a sense of self-worth by participating in it? Every one of these questions is something just about every actress faces, especially those that start off pre-adulthood. Perfect Blue explores these questions, putting Mima through a crisis that starts off as existential, and then becomes dangerously, fatally, real. The problem I have is it isn't explored ENOUGH. Mima goes from nervous but excited to an emotional wreck before the rape scene is filmed. It all feels rather quick, like the movie just wants to get to the psychological horror, instead of letting her slowly unspool. Likewise, the other side of the coin -- how the handlers are pressuring her into doing this for the "betterment" of her career -- is under-served. This is where another 5-10 minutes would do this movie well; it would allow Mima's descent into madness some time to unfold instead of feeling like a shifting of gears, and it would allow time to explore how she's become a cog in a machine run by others. But it's not a fatal flaw, don't get me wrong, because this movie is still OUTSTANDING. Mima's descent is relayed in such a way that puts you, the viewer, in as off-kilter a state as Mima is. The show she's on starts to unintentionally mirror her real life woes, and slowly, she can't tell the difference anymore, and neither will you. Is it the work of the stalker? Is she hallucinating? Does she have a split personality? Is the "ghost" of herself real? Mima can't make heads or tails of it, and the way the narrative unfolds, neither will you. It is effective at sucking you into Mima's growing sense of madness. And it isn't just the horror of the stalker, or her losing a grip on reality that's horrifying. You can sense how much she doesn't want to do things like the rape scene or the nude photography session, but she willingly goes along because to not do so would be to give into the old life she feels is looming over her like the blade of an executioner's axe, Everything else about this movie is equally commendable. The use of color and the art style in the people is wonderful. The pacing is excellent, the music is fantastic, just about everything in this movie is a knockout. It's on the doorstep of a masterpiece for me; give it a little more time, and it would've been so. Even still, that one big hiccup isn't a problem. This has more than enough quality to earn its reputation and be a strong recommendation to any savvy movie lover, whether you like anime or not. Hooptober 2022 movie #16/31