“All About Lily Chou-Chou” Is for Anyone Who Simultaneously Mourns the End of Adolescence and Celebrates Having Survived It
Anyone who has ever been a teenager will understand the feeling of surviving the hormone-rampant ages of adolescence — a time when every emotion felt like a matter of life and death, when loneliness could hollow you out, when the smallest cruelty could leave a lasting scar. They will agree that teenage years are arguably some of the most tumultuous times a person can go through. “All About Lily Chou-Chou” (2001) is the perfect reminder for adults of how sharp the world felt in our teens and how desperately we all once searched for meaning and connection with others.
Rarely do movies begin with almost five minutes of just text on the screen, but “All About Lily Chou-Chou” incorporates conversations strangers have on an internet forum about dream-pop singer Lily Chou-Chou into the introduction of the film. For those with a slightly insufficient attention span, this may seem like a nightmare, but it is the start of a deeper conversation about adolescence in the 2000s and the role that the internet plays in shaping youths of that era. The film, in a nonlinear narrative structure, details two turbulent teenage years of Yuichi (Hayato Ichihara) and those around him that ultimately spur his coming-of-age. Written and directed by Shunji Iwai, “All About Lily Chou-Chou” paints a certain loss of innocence that all of us seem privy to in the journey of growing up.
Posting under the username “philia,” Yuichi describes Lily Chou-Chou as the embodiment of the cryptic concept of “ether” and the genesis of all genius. Through the fan forum he moderates, he and other devoted fans gather to share their reverence for Lily and the ethereal pull of her music. Throughout the film, conversations between Yuichi and fellow Lily fan “Blue Cat”, in the forum are intertwined between scenes of Yuichi’s life. The two find solace in their conversations with each other and rely on these interactions as a way to escape from their real world. Not only do they discuss their love for Lily Chou-Chou and her music, but also confide in each other about the ups and downs of their separate lives. Though arbitrary on the surface, Iwai splits Yuichi’s teenage experience into two distinct worlds – the anonymous chasm of the internet and the unforgiving real world. The internet shapes Yuichi’s character as it further severs him from the real world and forces the teenager into a moral ambiguity.
As Yuichi begins his middle school life, he befriends an academically inclined Shusuke (Shugo Oshinari) in kendo club. They quickly establish a strong bond along with their other friends whom they meet in school. However, Yuichi’s life goes through a disruptive change when he and his friends travel to Okinawa, where Shusuke has a near-death experience. After the incident, Shusuke becomes brooding and manipulative. In a way, Yuichi’s final glimpse of childhood innocence fades during the summer between his first and second year of junior high. By his second year, he is completely immersed in Shusuke’s immorality and becomes both a witness and a participant in his cruelty towards others. He becomes complicit when Shusuke orders him to watch over their classmate, Shiori (Yu Aoi), whom he has coerced into compensated dating with older men.
Initially, the story is hard to follow along due to its back-and-forth between timelines. However, as the movie progresses, the disarrayed clutter of narratives starts to make sense as we realize that we are not meant to completely understand the story clearly. Instead, like the characters, we are meant to exist in a dreamlike state, lost in the confusion and turmoil of adolescence, where clarity is fleeting and insight remains limited. For Yuichi, this confusion drives his need for escape, which he finds through the online forum dedicated to Lily Chou-Chou and his deep love for music. We only start to fully understand the film and its plot after it ends through reflection and retrospection, just like how past mistakes from adolescence only seem to make sense as time passes.
The most praiseworthy aspect of “All About Lily Chou-Chou” lies in its cinematography. As one of the most beautifully shot films of the early 2000s, this film visually represents coming-of-age themes through its unique filming techniques. A large part of the footage is captured through camcorders when the boys travel to Okinawa. The disjointed shots are quick and shaky, but ultimately add authenticity to the perspectives of the film as it shows us a succinct version of what the teens are seeing.
The film also visually contrasts the three main teenagers, Yuichi, Shusuke, and Shiori, who all become infatuated with Lily Chou-Chou through each other. At different points in the movie, they all stand in a field while listening to Lily Chou-Chou on a portable CD player. While Yuichi stands in a lush field of tall grass and listens to music in a peaceful yet melancholic mood, Shiori listens to her CD player in a yellowing field of grass while looking at the sky. The rich green grass that Yuichi stands in suggests a lingering youthful idealism, even though Yuichi senses the imminent loss of innocence he will experience. On the contrary, the yellowing grass that Shiori stands in tells us the decay and fade of innocence that she hopes to escape from. Shusuke is the only one who stands in a barren land, shouting into the open field in anger and desperation. This act adds another layer of symbolism, highlighting the deep loneliness he feels and the internal anger he harbors, emotions he has no healthy outlet for.
Oshinari’s acting in this sequence is absolutely gut-wrenching and goes above and beyond for the young performer he was at the time. The three teenage actors in “All About Lily Chou-Chou” continuously exhibit the full emotional depth of their characters (perhaps due to the fact that they are real teenagers). Their performances make the rest of us resonate with them and mourn their lost childhoods. None of the characters in the film is inherently evil or good, and it’s their moral ambiguity that makes them so intriguing.
“Clair De Lune” is on loop as Yuichi gazes into the “Erotic” album poster of his favorite dream-pop singer, Lily Chou-Chou. Music serves as a source of comfort and escapism for the characters, but also as a false veil of security for the viewers. Disturbing scenes are often paired with the backdrop of calming romantic piano music, or even Lily Chou-Chou’s peacefully serene songs. Layered into the soundscape, the film also establishes a clear theme of composer Debussy’s classics, such as “Reverie” and “Arabesque.” The choice of incorporating one of the most prominent figures of Romantic classical music is no coincidence, especially in conjunction with the dreamy synth-pop that Lily Chou-Chou so often haunts the narrative with. “All About Lily Chou-Chou” gives its audience a seemingly dreamy escape from the real world by shrouding its atmosphere in the most romantic music both past and present, while still portraying the harsh realities of adolescence and real life.
Being a teenager is hard. We all have to grapple with the realities of transitioning from an innocent child with no worries to an adult with bills to pay and jobs to find. Our teenage years are the hellish process that whips most of us into shape to face real-life challenges (though some of us are still trying to learn how to be a functioning adult in society even past teenage-hood). “All About Lily Chou-Chou” doesn’t offer anything new on the perspectives of enduring the turbulence of youth, but it doesn’t need to. Coming-of-age is a universal experience, and sometimes just representation is enough to show us that we are not alone in trying to figure out how to navigate the hollow abyss that is adulthood.