Directed by Satoshi Kon | 86 mins | 2001
"Perfect Blue" director Kon continues to explore the myth-making process and the deceptions and confusions that go into the formation of a star persona in the brilliant, boundary-blurring "Millennium Actress". Begun in monochrome that slowly saturates with color, "Millennium Actress" revolves around the encounter between a male documentarian and a legendary, reclusive performer, Chiyoko Fujiwara, who has long outlived the movie studio that groomed her for celebrity. Tracing Fujiwara’s steps from a stiflingly traditional upbringing through war-torn Manchuria and into the present day, Kon’s playful, ingenious narrative uses film-within-film conceits to give us the history of an actress who, through the roles she disappears into, embodies a history of Japan itself.

English language version