Embarrassingly, the first time I came across All About Lily Chou-Chou (2001) was after watching an edit on Instagram. I liked the nostalgic feel the film’s cinematography had and was in the mood to watch a film heavily inspired by ‘90s culture. Admittedly, I went into watching All About Lily Chou-Chou without realising how dark the film’s themes were, but this only left me all the more curious about the film’s ambitions and that of the director, Shunji Iwai.
I hadn’t watched a full film in a long time, but I was keen to get back into watching longer-form content. With the amount of content at our disposal, it can be easy to forget about watching films or visiting the cinema. But the older I’ve gotten, the more important I’ve realised physical media such as films are. All About Lily Chou-Chou had such a profound impact on me that it made me consider picking up more physical copies of films and expanding what I choose to watch.
On one hand, Shunji Iwai’s All About Lily Chou-Chou is a film that covers ruthless high school bullying culture, but also the emerging digital age, and the dichotomy between online and offline worlds and personalities.
Our protagonist Yūichi Hasumi, is a fourteen-year-old living in Japan, who finds himself trapped in a group of high school boys dictated by leader Shūsuke Hoshino. The film is not chronological, starting when both Yūichi and Shūsuke are in their second year of junior high school, before tracing back to the first year during which the boys were good friends. It is not until the second year of school that Shūsuke’s personality dramatically changes, negatively affecting multiple classmates and his own friends. Yūichi himself is a victim of this change, being viciously bullied by his former friend and humiliated through violence and sexual humiliation.
The plot turns even darker when Yūichi is forced through Shūsuke’s orders to supervise Shiori Tsuda, a girl in his class who Shūsuke has blackmailed into selling herself to older Japanese men. Yūichi has no choice but to wait for Tsuda after she is finished with the men she sees, ensuring she gets home safe. The strange friendship that forms between Yūichi and Tsuda is perhaps one of the most heartbreaking parts of the film for me, as they are both under the control and manipulation of Shūsuke, with no clear way out. Both Tsuda and Yūichi have no real control over their lives anymore, and have no outlet for their misery apart from listening to artist Lily Chou-Chou, whose songs bring them comfort in what Yūichi refers to as ‘grey’ days.
The age of the internet is a core part of this film, and comes across in much of the cinematography, as well as overlaid clips of text from online forums. Ironically, Yūichi is first introduced to Lily Chou-Chou’s music by Shūsuke in their first year of junior high school. Her music becomes an outlet for Yūichi and he forms an online persona ‘Philia’, leading an online fan forum/BBS chat room for other Lily chats to converse in. In this sense, the online sphere Yūichi enters provides him tranquillity and an escape from the awful events taking place in his real life. Director Iwai presents a multifaceted image of the internet, highlighting how it can be a space where teenagers can express themselves without fear and judgement.
Iwai adapts the theme of advancing technology into the actual cinematography of the film through scenes such as those in Okinawa. Actors were given video cameras throughout scenes, filming clips ot themselves to create an authentic, home movie feel within the shots. Iwai was the first Japanese director to use the Sony HDW-F900 to shoot the film – a completely new at the time digital video camera. This gives the entire film a really natural look to its cinematography and arguably invokes a more emotive response from the audience since it appears less Hollywood-style, and more down to earth. It is often when we watch old videos or look back on old photographs of family or friends that we experience a wave of overwhelming nostalgia and emotion. I believe Iwai’s cinematography achieves the same effect.
Despite the film being published in the late 90s and set within this period, the themes presented are as prevalent today, if not more so. We are living in an era where there is a wealth of information and content to be consumed. We can connect with strangers all over the world across platforms such as Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, X, Bluesky, YouTube, Discord, Reddit, online gaming… the list is endless.
Both the 90s and the 2000s saw the breakthrough of the internet and the development of smartphones such as the iPhone, transforming the tech world and connectivity forever. But the 2010s saw what was arguably the birth of the social media age, with the most rapid technological shift whereby smartphones began supporting huge libraries of apps and sporting high-quality HD cameras comparable to those used for digital photography. You no longer needed a computer to achieve tasks such as checking emails, listening to music or reading the news. Your phone could do all of that and more, and at a faster rate.
However, this wave of technological advancement created a separation between online and offline worlds. In All About Lily Chou-Chou, Director Iwai shows how the online world has healing qualities through allowing teenagers to find solace in the music they enjoy. It is positive that the online world they access can be an outlet, a place where young people find community. But it is also concerning that the only place these teenagers feel safe to speak their minds and truly express themselves is online, a space which can never truly replace real life. This online sphere is disconnected from real life, and from the teenagers’ friends and families.
This then begs the question as to where do all these thoughts and feelings the teenagers in All About Lily Chou-Chou go to when they can’t be openly expressed outside of the internet? What other things can bring them the same solace as the musician they love? In Shiori Tsuda’s case, these bottled up feelings and silent emotions of misery, rage and depression result in a tragic loss of life. This makes the secretive status of such thoughts and feelings dangerous. They are almost a currency which the teenagers trade anonymously online.
In many ways, All About Lily Chou-Chou is about what is not expressed and bared in real life, but instead online. The students feel an overwhelming loss of innocence, and a fear that the world is as grey as it seems to be in high school for the rest of their lives. This is a turning point that perhaps almost everyone experiences in their adolescence, but Director Iwai presents this reality in a shocking, often graphic way that I’m sure many viewers would find extremely difficult to watch.
But I’ve never been one to agree with unnecessary censorship of difficult themes and topics, especially when they touch on mental health. So for me personally, this film is an essential watch. Maybe not one to watch casually or during Friday night, but still a masterpiece.
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