Maybe They Are Also Real: Love & Pop

Love & Pop

"Love & Pop" is based on an novel by Ryu Murakami. It follows four Japanese high school girls who engage in "enjo-kosai". Enjo-kosai means "compensated dating". It is a practice in Japan where older businessmen pay teenage girls more commonly to simply spend time with them, or often for prostitution.

The main character, Hiromi (Asumi Miwa) is a pretty high school girl. She does not have the direction in life that three best frineds - Chisa, Nao, and Chie - already have. The film also depicts Shibuya in Tokyo. It is a fashonable downtown in Tokyo for girls who are intersted in fashion and trend, but it is also famous place for older men because that they hunt girls who accept enjo-kosai easily.

Hiromi has never engaged in enjo-kosai, but Chie (Yukie Nakama) has already and somtime had enjo-kosai including prostitution. Nao (Hirono Kudo) also has experince to do "Terekura". It is a telephone conversation and/or dating service, where it is free for women to talk and the men pay a lot money to participate in. 

When Hiromi met hem for window-shopping in Shibuya as usual, she found a beautiful and expensive ring in a jewelry store. Chisa, Nao and Chie wanted to help Hiromi to buy the ring. And then they accepted a pedophiliac and perverted businessman's offer of enjo-kosai - to have lunch with him. However Hiromi refused to take all the money because she did not want to change a relationship with her best friends. That is why Hiromi goes on enjo-kosai and prostitution by herself to get money for the ring.

"Love & Pop" is the first live action film for Hideaki Anno. Needless to say, Anno is best known as the director and writer of "Neon Genesis Evangelion", regarded by many as the greatest and most ambitious anime series of all time. After Evangelion, Anno made another great anime series "Kare Kano" which I wrote ealier on this blog and directed the film.

According to Wikipedia, Anno's style has come to be defined by the touches of superflatism and postmodernism that he injects into his work, as well as the thorough portrayal of characters' thoughts and emotions, often through unconventional sequences incorporating psychoanalysis and emotional deconstruction of these characters. It is well apparent in Love & Pops, too. Thus we can easily find common styles and touchs between Evangelion and Love & Pops.  

Besides that, Love & Pop was filmed almost entirely on hand-held digital cameras, and contains some very unusual camera work, including many different mounted camera positions, such as on a toy train, under tables, or inside girl's skirts. These unique and somehow perverted-like angles and hand-jiggling camera work leads us to feel the character's anxious emotions.

The English DVD released in 2004 and its sales copy is; "School girls by day...call girls by night." One reviewer on amazon.com claim; "this is misleading and inappropriate, since this is a serious film, not some smut!" I completely agree with it. Anno tries to depict more complexity like unbalance between frindship and virginity for teenage girls or anxiousness that teenage girls as existance of "more than child, less than adult", such as exact charctars of Evangelion.

You can see whole films with English subtitle on Youtube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=etMGycQ4aos

Reportedly Anno planned the ending scene to draw that four characters enjoied themselves on a beach in Okinawa, a popular sightseeing area in Japan, and shooted on location with actors and stuff. However, almost all of stuff appeared reluctant to comply with these pictures because of mismatch against mood and substance of whole stroy. Then Anno adopted another ending scene what four charcters walk and walk on a sewage canal in Shibuya.

Its back music is a cover of a famous song which took on in 1960's in Japan. The tittle is "Ano Subarashii Ai Wo Mou Ichido." It means "wonderful love once again." Both the scene on the sewage canal and lyrics of this famous song are so ironical. I believe it is exact match to the Anno's movie.

I found the original ending scence and alternative one used unreleased firms which were shooted in Okinawa.