Chokorietta

After a girl loses her mother and her dog, she shaves her head, begins to call herself Chokorietta, and starts to identify as a dog. She also hangs out with her unemployed senpai Masamune from the film club, who is keen on making a movie about her.

The actress Morikawa Aoi often plays the role of vulnerable, depressed girls, so she was the perfect fit. Out of the eight movies and series where I have seen her, this is perhaps her best acting performance. That is because the role gave her the opportunity to do many things that she doesn't normally do. Not many other people are seen, so there is also an extra focus on the main characters.

Chokorietta seems to suffer from an unspecified mental illness. This also includes being antisocial, and not being nice and reasonable at all times. She doesn't take any medicine and is not seen talking with any medical staff, but it seems that mental health is a theme. Masamune also seems to have a problem, at least to the extent that he has been unable or unwilling to get a job.

Running for 2 h 39 min, the movie felt extremely long and slow, with interesting things happening now and then. It took me three days to finish it. This may not be a negative for everyone, since it may help create a realistic feeling of the boredom in life.

It certainly goes outside of the normal. This is also seen in the impressionistic sequences that appear sometimes. Most often it is clear when this happens, but sometimes I was unsure if something was real or not.

It may be of interest that there are numerous references to the movie La Strada by Federico Fellini.

This movie will probably be hard to sell to most people, but I'm sure that some will find it interesting.

Chocorietta is the artful movie that has probably been watched by preteen and teen Japanese culture fans and when it didn't meet their expectations of a usual romance or fun movie, they gave it a 5/10. It's actually a solid movie about the loss of loved ones, dealing with a problematic past, and most probably with a personality disorder. You have two unusual characters struggling to find their place in the world and come to terms with themselves and their pasts. It does a pretty good job about reflecting the reaction to loss and the difficulty of moving on, which made me say to myself "I've been there". It has a big Fellini influence therefore, you'd be hearing lots of Fellini references.

I've landed on the movie because I've been watching Masaki Suda films in a row and he's the male lead in this one. He's quite a talented actor with some awards under his belt. The female lead also does a great job. It's the longest movie I've watched in a while and maybe it could have been a much more impressive movie if it was more compact and to the point but, the length gave me a sense of reality and I liked it.