Perfect Blue パーフェクトブルー (Satoshi Kon 今敏, 1997)

Perfect Blue パーフェクトブルー

1997 // Japan // Satoshi Kon 今敏

Letterboxd (LINK)

 

This film is a perfect psychological thriller dealing with numerous social and personal issues that are still relevant today. The sexualization of women, the fetishization of idols, the online/real life stalkers, the misapprehension of identity with fantasy, altogether this 80-minute animation feels more ‘real’ than the majority of the live-action films. Indeed I sort of forgetting PERFECT BLUE is an animation halfway through when I immersed myself as deeply as the heroine Mima (voiced by Junko Iwao) into an indistinguishable world of fantasy and reality. Who’s the ‘ghost’ she’s been seeing, dressed like her past-self in her idol dress as part of the pop-idol group “CHAM!” (frankly, their song is so catchy that I could still hear the melody now)? Is she Mima’s own id of whom her ego fails to acknowledge and reconcile?

 

When the film shows the filming of a rape scene, part of a drama series Mima participating in called “Double Bind”, I believe most of the audience would identify with her ‘ghost’ more. Why should a woman need to prove her acting ability by filming a scene of exploitation or shooting nude photos? Mima’s ‘worthiness’ is merely an image, embellished by his agent and shaped by the perception of the target audience constituted mainly by the lewd male. Me-Mania (voiced by Masaaki Okura) is the encapsulation of toxic fandom, whose idea of Mima as an ‘idol’ drives him to the extremity of violence.

 

PERFECT BLUE is everything about duality, the object, and its reflected or refracted image, most of the time the image is totally distorted. Mima couldn’t separate herself from the image projected from his manager and fans, the result is a loss of reality, jumping back and forth between her drama show (coincidentally it’s also about a serial killer with a disorder of split personality), her dream and the reality. We are as disorientating as Mima when Kon effortlessly mesh-cut the scenes together, no wonder Darren Aronofsky has to buy the rights of this film in order to copy the certain scene in his own film, now Kon is the object and Aronofsky is merely a mirror image.

 

Last but not least, the duality comes to the climactic point when Rumi (voices by Rica Matsumoto) is revealed to be the killer as she consumes Mima’s identity completely as her own. Her image oscillates between Rumi’s own face and chubby body and Mima’s idol-look, reinforcing the indulgence of fantasy, a psychological pathology. PERFECT BLUE is Satoshi Kon‘s debut feature and it has already shown his talent in blending imagination and reality in harmony (in the case of PERFECT BLUE, it’s a deliberated disharmony). It’s the world’s loss when Kon passed away at 46 years old. But even with PERFECT BLUE alone, Kon is deserved to be remembered as a masterful animator, and a true filmmaker.

Film’s Trailer