or: What is really going on?
One word to sum it up: Twisted.
At my young age of 15, I felt as if I were a little too old to watch my first anime movie. But there's a time for everything, and I am glad that I have now expanded my range of films even more. Perfect Blue probably isn't the best example of what anime really is, as I hear that this was one of the first films of its type to break barriers and introduce violence and sex into the genre, but to be honest, its a great example of plain anime. Not to mention it has a cool bathtub scene which was taken by another popular movie two years later, Requiem for a Dream...
Mima was a pop idol, worshipped by the masses until fashion dictated otherwise. In order to salvage her career, she is advised to drop music and pursue acting. A soap opera role is offered but Mima’s character is less clean cut than desired. Regardless, she agrees and events take a turn for the worse. She begins to feel reality slip, that her life is not her own. She discovers (imagines) her identical twin, a mirror image that hasn’t given up singing. Internet sites appear describing every intimate detail of her life and a figure stalks her from the shadows. Her friends and associates are threatened (and killed) as Mima descends into a dangerous world of paranoid delusion. She fears for her life and must unravel fact from illusion in order to stay alive.
Perfect Blue is one huge head fuck. And when I say that, I mean, you will sit there wondering what the hell is going on. I'll be honest with ya, I didn't entirely make ends meet or get the whole story, but what I did get out of it was amazing. The way it twists and turns fantasy and reality and warps it into something which results in madness is incredible. Its a movie which was made as if Alfred Hitchcock were to make an anime. The tension is suspenseful, as are the murders thrown in. To add to that, there is the really good look at the line between being yourself and being in a different role, which was further explored in another Aronofsky film, Black Swan. Nevertheless, Perfect Blue stands on it's own as a twisted psychological mindflip that is never done with frying your brain.
I must thank my long time reader Cherokee for pointing me towards this film!
THE VERDICT: Ever suspenseful and always twisting the story, Perfect Blue is one movie that isn't to be taken lightly.
8/10
