All About Lily Chou-Chou

All About Lily Chou-Chou (リリイ・シュシュのすべて, 2001), directed by Shunji Iwai, is a Japanese drama you can watch online on iFILM. At 146 minutes it sits between Iwai's Letter and Hana & Alice in his filmography, and it's the hardest of the three to sit through — which is also what makes it matter.

Two middle-school boys, Yuichi Hasumi and Shusuke Hoshino, drift apart after a summer trip to Okinawa where Hoshino had a near-death experience and came back someone else entirely. The Hoshino who returns runs a quiet economy of cruelty over his classmates. Yuichi escapes into an online fan forum for Lily Chou-Chou, a fictional ethereal pop singer whose music functions almost like a controlled substance — something to breathe when the physical world closes in. Yu Aoi and Takao Osawa are among the cast.

Iwai shot on digital video, and the lo-fi grain isn't a stylistic flourish — it flattens the distance between viewer and subject in a way that 35mm wouldn't allow. Stream All About Lily Chou-Chou (2001) online on iFILM.