Here’s a look at something by Satoshi Kon—who made a rather interesting and renowned animated flick you may just have heard of by the name of Paprika. But before that came a deliriously disturbing psychological piece that exerted its influence over western directors, and not only that, still arguably resonates even more now that it did twenty-five years ago—it’s Perfect Blue.
Before we get stuck into the plot, I’ll touch on the technical elements—the late nineties is an era of animation I have an affinity for, both in the east and west, where computer enhancement was able to complement the artistry of painted backdrops and two-dimensional cels instead of overtaking them. As such, you’ve got no shortage of evocative images here, with some great uses of lighting, detail, and elements that enhance the proceeding—unfortunately, due to the loss of the original print, DVD quality is about what you can expect tracking this one down.
Story-wise, we follow Mima Kirigoe (voiced by Junko Iwao), a young member of a cutesy J-pop girl band that’s all about its saccharine and wholesome appearance. These sorts of ‘idol groups’ are a very engrained Japanese thing that, if you aren’t aware, cater largely to male audiences—there’s a whole essay that could be written about the cultural context for this, but needless to say, all the unfortunate obsessions that go with that haven’t gone away, and the film gets stuck in on this off the bat. Mima is deciding to leave her group to pursue an acting career—and that doesn’t sit well with one rather fixated fan. As our protagonist starts finding her roles in schlocky thriller pieces, the lines between performance and reality soon start to blur, with fraying sanity eventually proceeding bouts of murder—and the perpetrator isn’t necessarily obvious right away…
It’s at this point that I’ll note that the film was a favorite of Darren Aronofsky, future director of the eternally gut-wrenching Requiem for a Dream and environmental parable Mother!. Not only did he secure rights to this one to imitate a specific shot, but there’s easy parallels between the style of Requiem and this one. Both films involve disintegrating lines between fantasy and reality, even if in Requiem’s case it’s a lot more upfront as to what’s what—and both use that nicely unsettling method of increasingly rapid cuts to discombobulate the audience.
In fact, Perfect Blue has some very adept editing means of having the viewer question continually their own understanding of what’s going on as it gets into the latter acts—swerving you around even as you think everything’s been explained. It’s an expert way of getting the audience right into the head of a lead who’s not even sure who she may be and what she’s getting into.
But that’s not all that makes this one compelling—early in the film, we have Mima log onto the late nineties dial-up powered internet to find her identity essentially imitated by one deranged fan. While some of this, like the old-school Apple computer she uses or even the scene where an older woman has to explain to a twenty something how to use the internet, date this to the nineties…well, in our age of deepfakes, spoofed twitter feeds, and algorithms designed to collate everything about you, I shouldn’t have to explain how this still hits disturbingly close.
In our digital world, where identities can be easily stolen or spied upon, where some drive themselves to the brink balancing an image they so desperately want to preserve to millions while losing touch of what they actually are…it’s more prescient than a quarter-century old flick has any right to be. And where fact and fiction, reality and fantasy get blurred, where the question of who is the character on the screen and who Mima really is comes up…that’s where those chilling questions about the nature of a world addicted to chasing images of perfection will inevitably come up.
If I have any complaints, it’s that the very last scene has an almost whiplash-like jarring change of tone. But otherwise, I do heartily recommend Perfect Blue—though be warned, there are some moments that disturbed even myself. Perhaps that’s a testament to the success of Kon’s intent here, but it may not be an easy watch for some. With that in mind, if that’s not any issue, and if the themes above resonate even a little, then certainly track it down—there’s no shortage to ponder on with it…
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