Rabu & poppu

Enjo Kosai (compensated dating) is nothing new, and if you go to Shibuya, even now there are girls who comes and asks you for your "support" (literally translates to Enjo). There's a market for it as seen on this movie, and it has become easy way for high school girls to gain money.

Four girls are friends at school. Each has reason to go on Enjo Kosai. Hiromi is new to all this, but she first starts with going to karaoke house with middle aged man with her friends. Gradually, she starts to do it on her own. Her parents of course knows nothing about this. Hiromi has a goal of making enough money to buy an expensive ring she saw. She thinks its not so difficult, and gets dating appointments over phone. But reality of life is about to give her a lesson.

This type of activity is very easy in Japan where there are many karaoke booth, and so called love hotels. It's easy to get lost in the crowd and blend in as not to be conspicuous. All the girls take full advantage of the society they live in. But such activities are not without risk, and that seems to be the point if there's any about this movie.

Movies about prostitution has been made before and this is another modern take on it. The movie provides inside look of Japanese society, and is an interesting story to watch.

The first thing you need to know before watching Hideaki Anno's "Love & Pop" is that it's made by Hideaki Anno. He's famous for twisting clichés and deliver heavy symbolism through visual mediums as broad as animation and on here he does it through live action filming. And wow does he succeed.

You won't see a better looking film than this, it's so gorgeously filmed with purposeful camera shots that actually bring something to the story, sometimes voyeuristic, sometimes ecstatic, sometimes POV, 100% of its time. It serves to show the busyness of every day life as seen through the lens of teen girls. It just oozes with style. Never seen a movie filmed like this with so many different perspectives!

In Love & Pop we follow Hiromi, a 16-year-old high school girl who seemingly has the perfect life. Loving parents, amazing friends, good economy, lives a safe life... despite all of this she feels an emptiness inside, a wish for a desire- something to carry her into the next era of her life, adulthood. To fill up the gaps of her own emptiness she does "subsidised-dating" a type of dating culture that has men paying girls to date them for a few minutes or hours, this is all done through the phone of her friend Nao.

She never does any dating alone (always with a friend) but when she finds out about a ring that she wants she decides to try and get the amount of money needed to buy this ring, Nao gives Hiromi her phone (which is not hers really but from a gay man). And thus we follow her walking around Shibuya, picking up calls from lonely strange men to earn that money for that ring.

The premise seems kind of strange, I'm not familiar with Japan's dating culture but have seen glimpses of it through films and animation. This movie decides to show everything about it, and it's not a very pretty picture- men who are very lonely and ill-fitted for society let out their strangest and weirdest desires sometimes by the most simplest and mundanest of stuff or sometimes by the most scary and depraved. Hideaki shows this but it never feels exploitative, it feels rather documentary in a way. A critique of the gross world of men, which somehow feels similar to his critique of "escapist otaku" culture through his anime Evangelion. Even though it's never "spoken about" it's a clear intention of the director, Hiromi is the one that experiences all of this just for the sake of having a Topaz ring- just to experience something special that her friends already have. This is another subject that the movie tackles, desire and leaving chapters of one's life behind- high school can seem so dramatic and pointless at the same time, friendships turn out to be fleeting and not as "forever" as one thinks them to be and everyone is already moving towards new horizons. This is something that pains Hiromi deeply and it's in here where we find the film's true and poetic heart. It's sad but also a very poignant way of looking at life, most high school films always see this as a happy time where you cement your bonds that last forever, but it's not like that. In fact you're at limbo, cherishing your friends and last years of innocence before you become an adult, and if you're not "moving" then you can be left behind which is a sad fact of life. Hiromi tries to find this desire, masked through the search for money to buy that coveted Topaz ring. Hiromi narrates the movie throughout, sometimes in a Socratic conversation with herself which is so interesting in how it's framed. Hideaki Anno never frames Hiromi with disdain, he does it very respectful and is very in-tune to how teenagers feel.

The soundtrack is phenomenal, charged with modern sounding pop music intertwined with classical and recognisable scores (just like Evangelion!). You can see that every aspect of the film was handled with care.

If there's anything that I would've wished the film would've done better is that some segments could've been shorter in the second half, the first half is very energetic but in the second half there's many uncomfortable and long scenes (although I understand why they're there for the plot). Also I wish there would've been more scenes with Hiromi's friends, the marketing of the movie makes it seem that the movie follows the four friends throughout the movie but truth is is that we stop seeing them after the first 40 mins or so. Once again, just a nitpick, I do understand that this is Hiromi's experience and I guess her friends being in the rest of the movie wouldn't have done the plot well.

This might be going into my all-time faves list, mainly because it made a mark on me- what an impactful movie, it certainly doesn't have what you'd call a happy ending but it's gonna leave you thinking about it. If you're searching for a happy high school flick then this one is not for you.

This film is about pedophilia, perversion and prostitution through the eyes of 15-17 year old high school girls. It was filmed entirely using mini digital cameras mounted in bizarre places (like in a bowl of soup, on a pair of chopsticks and up a girl's skirt).

OK, if that didn't scare you off, then please continue reading.

It's a heavy, disturbing subject right off the bat. That plus the unconventional camera-work rings of "pretentious art house film". But somehow Hideaki Anno pulls it off. I suspect that it's because this is a sort of *tongue-in-cheek* pretentious art house film. Unlike certain snotty Cannes Film Festival contenders who seem to take themselves too seriously, Anno deliberately goes way over the top, as if to say, "Yes, I am a very strange man who likes to put cameras in microwave ovens." As a result, the mood of this film is a cross between CLOCKWORK ORANGE and AIRPLANE 2. Take it or leave it.

You might be wondering why I rated it only 6/10 despite the fact that I seem to be praising it. You see, I've rated it on my special Hideaki-Annometer which grades on a much tougher scale. True, it's a worthwhile film. But relative to some of his other work, this comes across as a bit experimental and fractured.

His later work SHIKI-JITSU is the perfection of what we see here. You'll even notice many recurring trademarks such as train tracks, red lighting and "countdown" intertitles. In the two years following LOVE & POP, Hideaki Anno mastered the style he dabbled in here.

But oh wait I forgot about the music. (I may have to bump my rating up to a 7.) As with SHIKI-JITSU, he matches the perfect doleful piano pieces with poetic voice-over narration. In particular, I recognized a few Chopin sonatas, Debussy's "Claire de lune" and 1 or 2 other haunting melodies. Despite the vulgarity of the subject matter, these classical/romantic pieces provide a very interesting counterbalance. And I believe that is the whole theme of the film: the precarious balance between perversion and innocence.

It's certainly a memorable film. But it requires some patience. Be sure to stick around for the 2nd half when things get REALLY weird.

This is one of those films that you need to watch very carefully. The surface is a very disturbing film, but deep enough, this film is a full essay on teenage prostitution in Japan... in the 90's. Now a reality around the globe. That makes this film twice disturbing...

The film is shot in a lot of unorthodox techniques that can be confusing for a western audience, but you need to remember Hideaki Anno is the creator of such mind-blowing works as Neon Genesis Evangelion, and in the same same vein, we can contemplate how deep can a teenager go in her despair to be something she is not supposed to be. Requiem for a Dream is the nearest thing you'll ever see to "Love & Pop".

Watch it. Just watch it.

First of all, let me just say that I am appalled by some of the reviews left here.

I can see why one would flinch at this movie ( I did too, a couple of times) and I think that's the reaction it wants.

"Great grief, great joy...I've known neither one."