Shunji Iwai's coming-of-age film All About Lily Chou-Chou is an unusual stream of melancholic images accompanied by dreamy music and overexposed imagery which renders this entire experience as a jumbled collection of fuzzy memories held together by a string of message board posts from a certain blog. It's a loose story about increasing alienation and the effects it has on adolescents, who start to escape the real world issues through the Ether, a mystical state of mind provided to them by a (fictional) pop singer, Lily Chou-Chou. The characters are as complex as they are abstract and simple. The plot is completely out of the picture. The only thing that matters here is the atmosphere.And does the film succeed in conveying an ethereal atmosphere? Well, not really. Certain scenes do hit their mark but most of the time, you feel the movie's length and the drifting, unsteady cinematic style is far too removed from the ground for its own good. Sure, there are beautiful moments here and there, as is the soundtrack, but overall the movie feels weak, watered down, incapable of building a memorable world.From: mevmijaumauREWIND

All About Lily Chou-Chou is a movie that deals in teenaged alienation and admiration. Based around a fictional popstar named Lily Chou-Chou, the characters inhibit a sense of realism that makes the movie perfectly palatable to a bigger audience. However on a technical term, the movie brings together a number of creative methods. The emails (or messageboard) that are strewn throughout display a strong realisation of our admiration towards such media personas. It also explores the idolism we give out to people that influence and connect with us through an art form, which in this case is music.Some of the scenes can be confusing as there is not too much coherence throughout the movie in terms of a plot line however we see scenes of suburban torment, beautiful acres of green fields that are superbly shot and long shots of beaches and the sea. Also contained in the movie is two opposing sides of teenaged life; care-free fun and angst-filled isolation. The story of Kuno is a sad one, we see her raped and see her head shaven which ends up leading to her death. We also see classroom violence which may very well be exaggerated for melancholic effect but definitely has a profound influence on the viewer.A lot of things about this movie make it an interesting watch but my only concern with it is that maybe it's too long. Due to the 146 or so minute runtime, there are times where I felt parts could be cut down. The padding out the director has took with the movie does take away from the enjoyment of it and perhaps with a little more editing, I would find the movie more engrossing. However, the film does generate a good amount of interesting scenes and relatable characters which doesn't make the movie a chore to watch. Nothing here is challenging except for the overkilled duration. But with the right state of mind, one may enjoy the floating camera shots of urban and rural Japan.

The work of Japanese filmmaker Shunji Iwai is different from other contemporary filmmakers like Kitano Takeshi,Aoyama Shinji and Kore-Eda Hirokazu.His films about Japanese youth are known for their distinct visual style and arcane music.Most of his films clock more than 2 hours.In "All about Lily Chou Chou", we see that there are youngsters connected to each other over Internet.They make regular attempts to inform each other about their fictional pop star.They would like to live like her in a world where virtual reality will surely become a key feature of everyday existence in future.This is not a brief passage about a space colony.This is a brief description of things which have fundamentally gone wrong for Japanese households.Shunji Iwai does not show Tokyo as it is overcrowded.We see a small city where young people are facing miseries,sorrows and tremendous emotional pain."All about Lily Chou Chou" handles well many disparate themes such as breakdown of Japanese family system,bullying at school,rape and prostitution.The unique thing about this film is its soundtrack.You have to see this film to feel ether.

In a lot of ways, this movie is an indictment of the Japanese school system similar to Battle Royal. That said, where Battle Royal is a futuristic allegory, this is a brutal portrayal of what could be real life.There are two problems with the movie. One is the constant interruptions by script from the BBS that the main character is posting on. Some of these are relevant to the story, but many seem superfluous and do little to aid plot development - becoming highly tedious. The second problem is the use of hand-held camera. This is used very effectively in some places, however in others it is a bit too "amaturish" and shaky and does more to give the viewer a headache than to depict the scene it is involved in. There is also the trip to Okinawa, where the entire length of the holiday is filmed with the hand-held cameras and is so drawn-out that rather than an important segment of a film, it appears more like the actual home footage of someone's holiday.Other than that, this film is brilliant - with highly developed and unique characters, a lot of drama and a beautifully crafted storyline. I would recommend it.