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Perfect Blue Movie Review

Perfect Blue is a 1997 psychological thriller anime film directed by Satoshi Kon. It’s one of his better movies, but still a film that I did not love.

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“No. I’m the real thing“

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A pop singer gives up her career to become an actress, but she slowly goes insane when she starts being stalked by an obsessed fan and what seems to be a ghost of her past. Watching this movie, I was struck by just how obviously influenced Aronofsky was by Kon in most of his films. I am not the biggest fan of Kon, but this film was better than ‘Millennium Actress’ and much more effective, but still with a few caveats.

My main issue with this movie is that it is very much the case of style over substance. The animation is excellent for sure – very polished and stylized. The atmospheric, suspenseful tone accompanied its visuals quite well too. But the movie is so stylized and so preoccupied with its tone and atmosphere that it forgot to tell a genuinely engaging and well thought out story.

Yes, we have here the themes of performance and identity. The film explored the internet personality and how it can diverge from your real self. In this area, the movie was both of its time and anticipating of the future. The focus on voyeurism made the movie quite striking and shocking. Take Hitchcock and make him more gruesome and you’ve got Perfect Blue.

I did not care for the protagonist of the piece. Yes, Mima is this annoying girl with an overly childish personality. I disliked the film’s tendency to make a victim out of her as the majority of the runtime is devoted to her screaming and panicking. More character development for her and others was sorely missing here.

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Perfect Blue does have some very memorable imagery, but it also has numerous scenes that are graphic in sex and violence, but I got the feeling that they were just there to shock audiences instead of provoke them intellectually or truly thrill them. It’s a film that flows well and is very well filmed, scored and directed, buy it left me wanting for more in its plot and characterization.