Customer Reviews

Love & Pop

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4 star:		(4)
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1 star:		(1)

 

 

Love and Pop (1998) is the first live action film by the anime genius Hideaki Anno. Anno is best known as the director and writer of Neon Genesis Evangelion, regarded by many as the greatest and most ambitious anime series of all time. After Evangelion, Anno directed Kare Kano and some short anime series, but decided to leave the world of anime to explore live action filmmaking.

Love and Pop was shot on a minimal budget using a video camera, but Anno uses this limitation as a source of inspiration, experimenting constantly with camera angles that would be impossible with large, unwieldy film cameras. Anno's camera goes under tables, inside sweaters, inside cups, on toy trains, under, over, and around the characters. it's actually a bit dizzying, at times. film buffs will love the technique, but other viewers may find it annoying or tiresome.

the film tells the story of teenage japanese girls who engage in "enjo kosai," or compensated dating. apparently, this is a phenomenom in japan where older businessmen pay teen girls to simply hang out with them for a while, and sometimes it involves prostitution. the story is based on a novel by Ryu Murakami called Topaz II. The first Topaz book was made into the film Tokyo Decadence by Murakami himself. The Topaz books portray two aspects of Japan's sexual underbelly, so whereas Tokyo Decadence is all skyscrapers and wealth, Love & Pop is more street-level.

Is Love & Pop great? It is definitely worth seeing. The cover of this American DVD release reads, "Schoolgirls by day... Call girls by night..." but this is misleading and inappropriate, since this is a serious film, not some smut!

It is worth noting that Love and Pop inspired one of Japan's best filmmakers, Shunji Iwai, to experiment with digital video himself in All About Lily Chou-Chou.

"School girls by day...call girls by night." Er, okay, as long as you ignore the fact that the characters aren't really call girls, none of the action revolves around school and the movie takes place almost entirely during the day. More like an "Afterschool Special" directed by a mad genius (Anno) from a story by another mad genius (Murakami). Alhough sometimes a tad preachy, the final shot of the girls walking through the open sewer at the end, their legs ever so slowly becoming submerged in the muck (accompanied by an inane J-pop ending theme) is pretty unforgettable. Worth watching for fans of subversive cinema.

I purchased _Love & Pop_ Not because it was directed by Anno Hideaki, Neon Genesis Evangelion, but because it is based on a novel written by one of my favorite Japanese novelists Murakami Ryu, _Almost Transparent Blue_ and _Coin Locker Babies_. I had no expectations for the film, but I went in hoping that it would be an enjoyable experience. It was. Definately not one of the greatest films that I have seen, but it was decent and entertaining.

The movie stars 11th grader Hiromi Yoshii, Asumi Miwa, who is a thin, kind of tall pretty girl with short hair. She gets along with her father, who loves his model trains, and her mother, who loves her swimming, and her older sister. She lives in a nice home and has a good group of friends: Chisa, who want to be a dancer; Nao, a computer and manga nerd; and Chieko, who is the most developed physically of the three girls. However, there seems to be one thing missing from Hiromi's life, and that is a sufficient cash flow. Hiromi and her friends first make money by accepting offers of older men who invite them out to eat. these men are relatively harmless, they just want to talk and keep company with pretty girls. It is still disturbing though men in their 30s 40s or 50s paying 15 or 16 year old girls to keep them company, Hiromi makes a little money doing this, but it is not until she desires to purchase a topaz ring that she takes the next step.

Hiromi and her friends eventually join a "compensated dating" service which links men to teenaged girls in order to make more money. These services are also used by males and females of the same age trying to find dates. The people Hiromi meet are very creepy. A construction worker who has not had a conversation with a female in 5 years asks Hiromi to accompany him to the market and a video store in order to show people that he does have a girlfriend. In the store he forces Hiromi to do something purely nasty. The next man she meets, played by Asano Tadanobu, is truly frightening.

This is a decent film shot on a shoe string budget. There are quite a few camera angles that would have been impossible with a bigger camera, but it also gives the film a home video look. Some of the views are just plain odd. Under the sweater, Hiromi washing her face, etc. The cameras also come dangerously close to looking up the young girls' skirts quite often, which I find a bit discomforting. Not because I am a prude, but because of the age of the girls. Of course, being what this film portrays, maybe I am being a bit stuffy.

A decent film that shows that the Japanese sex industry begins with people at a very young age.

As real as "The Last Samurai" was false. Better than any documentary in showing how far modern Japan has fallen from the mythological high point of bushido. A hard honest look, from the viewpoint of alienated Japanese schoolgirls, at a society without any real reason for existing besides accumulation. I love Japan, and I'm sorry to see it going down the tubes (though, quite honestly, when I'm in Japan, everything seems fine -- but then, the people I associate with aren't teenaged schoolgirls). Perhaps enough honest self-criticism of the kind embodied by this film will turn things around before it's too late. Children are the future. If children don't see one, then there isn't much hope. "Bounce Ko Gals," a very similar film with a much bigger budget, is also worth seeing, but more "Hollywood" than this one. I'm soap-boxing, but the film doesn't. Very entertaining despite its (hidden) moral, and the guerilla film-making technique adds to the sense of veracity.

After his animated masterpiece "Neon Genesis Evangelion", japanese director Hideaki Anno tried for the first time to produce a live action film. "Love&Pop" is based on the book "Topaz II", from the author who inspired the erotic film "Tokyo Decadence", and is an excellent product with an amazing use of digital cameras and very deep dialogues. If you love Anno's style, you should not miss it!

I was a huge fan of Anno's anime series Neon Genesis Evangellion when I was a teenager. It was full of teenage angst and I related to it a lot at the time. As an adult it hasn't faired so well on repeat viewings but his live action feature Love and Pop (shot straight after Evangellion) was fascinating. I'd heard of enjo kosai (a term for subsidised dating in Japan) before and found the idea perplexing. Young women selling their companionship (and it would seem that this can simply involve talking with a man at a cafe through to far more dangerous situations) for money to buy the expensive items that normally wouldn't be affordable on a regular teenage salary. The film is adapted from a book by Ryu Murakami (In the Miso Soup, Almost Transparent Blue) which I haven't read but it's typical Murakami. There will be characters who disgust you and the fact that the closing credits show the young women marching though an open sewer speaks volumes about the dangerous game the young girls are playing and its affect on them. The camera angles are strange to say the least. While it could be argued these ugly camera shots are used to represent the ugly world these characters live in they can be off putting at times and almost seem childish. And yet...I liked this film but I am a film student. I worry that people used to more mainstream cinema may tire of this very fast. The performances from the young girls are great and some of the male performers did well but were never a threat of stealing a scene. If you can appreciate an artistic take on an unsavoury subject and forgive unusual cinematography, pick this up. Doubly so if you have a fondness for Japanese culture or you're a fan of Anno or Murakami. Otherwise steer clear.

Dont get me wrong, this was a great movie. between the mad low res camera, and the disgusting sexual situations, it suceeds in what it sets out to do: Disgust you. For at least two hours after I watched it I felt literally sick to my stomach, and even now I find it hard to to sleep as I think about it. It was similar to the feelings I got from watching the end of evangelion, however this was more powerfull, and felt less like a glimpse into anno's mind, and more like a plunge into darkness

For the record, I thought 'Lost in Translation' was an extremely OK film, in every way tasteful, thoughtful and, hey, there's Bill Murray and panoramic views of Tokyo and so forth and ... well, like a lot of people, I couldn't quite explain what it was about Sofia Coppola's film that bothered me, and I ended up taking a swing at poor old Paul Thomas Anderson. I am not an Asian film specialist, nor an Otaku, nor deeply enamored with Ozu or Mizoguchi, so my first impressions of 'Love and Pop' are simply those of a general film afficianado (read: not a snob) who was baited with the promise of 'maximum eye candy' (DVDBeaver.com) and the opportunity to make a blind purchase during a release schedule slow patch. Anyways, imagine if you will, the nooks and crannies of everyday urban Japan, downright attractive Japanese schoolgirls (Scarlett who?), and the there-you-are quality of video windowboxed with immersive, eavesdropping elan and, voila, the unlikely (single disc) DVD of the year so far. As with LIT, the storyline is merely a tether for 'emotional scenery' and the usual Zeitgeist-y rambling of artier fare. In L&P, however, the rambling is easier to appreciate as we aren't constantly reminded that feelings of alienation are kinda like 'being a white person in Tokyo'. The cultural imposition of watching Japanese catering to the whims and expectations of Westerners--or self-consciously going against type--is supremely distracting. No amount of beautiful cinematography can compensate for this, or for the apprehension of watching people of another culture being objectified.