All About Lily Chou-Chou
All-Time Favorites
•
2h 26m
Directed by Shunji Iwai | 146 mins | 2001
Incredibly prescient in its understanding of how a still-young internet would fundamentally alter youth culture, Shunji’s film introduces Yuichi (Hayato Ichihara) in an ice field, the landscape gradually obscured by accreting chat room messages. Alienated from classmates and his old friend Shusuke (Shugo Oshinari), Yuichi retreats into his relationship with the songs of goth-inflected pop act Lily Chou-Chou—created for the film, with vocals by Salyu, though the three-piece reformed for the movie’s 10th anniversary—whose music can do nothing to stop the bloody, hormone-fueled reckoning ahead. A clangorous collision of tradition and ultramodernity, innovative in its understanding of digital cinematography as a new medium with new rules.
Up Next in All-Time Favorites
-
Four Adventures of Reinette and Mirab...
Directed by Éric Rohmer | 99 mins | 1987
Shot quickly in and around Paris during a production break on Rohmer’s Le Rayon Vert, this breezy, witty film traces the exploits of two young women—one an ethnology student from the city, the other an unsophisticated aspiring artist from the cou... -
Can She Bake a Cherry Pie?
Directed by Henry Jaglom | 90 mins | 1983
The fleet, dryly funny fourth feature from independent cinema stalwart Henry Jaglom stars a riveting Karen Black—who also composed music for the film—as Zee, a middle-aged Upper West Sider, who, reeling after being abandoned by her husband, pursues an am... -
Unmade Beds
Leaving August 1
Directed by Amos Poe | 70 mins | 1976
Jean-Paul Belmondo’s character in "Breathless" (1960) thought he was Humphrey Bogart; Duncan Hannah’s character in this proto-No Wave work—a restless poseur slash photographer named Rico—thinks he’s Jean-Paul Belmondo. Released the same year...
