All About Lily Chou-Chou

Yuichi is in middle school and the one thing holding him up is a singer called Lily Chou-Chou. He runs a forum devoted to her where nobody knows anyone's real name. At school there is violence: Hoshino, once his friend, has installed himself at the centre of the class and grinds down everyone around him. The two layers of the film look as though they never meet, until you work out who two of the people posting on the forum are. Shunji Iwai wrote and directed. Its origin is unusual. On 1 April 2000 Iwai opened a site called Lilyholic and ran an internet novel there, writing forum posts in the voices of characters he had invented. Readers, mostly teenagers themselves, could post alongside those characters. Some of the forum text in the film came straight from that board. Iwai published the novel as a book in April 2001 and the film followed the same year. Takeshi Kobayashi wrote the music, with Iwai credited on two songs. Salyu is the voice of Lily Chou-Chou. It screened at the Toronto International Film Festival on 7 September 2001 and opened in Japan on 6 October. Who it is for: viewers who want formal risk in a film about adolescence, the internet and cruelty. Who it is not for: anyone wanting a clear narrative. Forum text runs across the screen as writing, the jumps in time are unexplained, and the film holds nobody's hand.