Page

Perfect Blue

❚ We may earn commission from links on this page. Our editorial is always independent (learn more).

Watch trailer

01:00

Perfect Blue

Save

Summary

A fading pop idol attempts to salvage her career by joining a soap opera, but her life soon takes a sinister twist. She begins to imagine a mirror-image of herself as a singing star, Internet sites about her appear, a stalker follows her every move and friends are threatened and even killed. Will she ever be able to separate reality and illusion? Japanese animation, with the voices of Junko Iwao, Rica Matsumoto, Shinpachi Tsuji and Masaaki Okura

Ad

Powered By

IMDB

Review

A star rating of 4 out of 5.

Calum Baker

The debut feature from influential Japanese animator Satoshi Kon uses an artfully splintered style to elevate what could have been a run-of-the-mill identity-crisis tale. It follows J-pop starlet Mima as she quits her all-girl trio and moves into acting. This entails developing a more mature public persona, including a nude photo shoot and filming a TV series in which her character is raped on screen. Meanwhile, someone's impersonating her online, the men around her wind up violently murdered, and both her dreams and waking life blur into sequences from the lurid crime show she's in. Adapting a novel by Yoshikazu Takeuchi, Kon slots together a jagged narrative that often seems to fold in on itself, with some startling cuts and inventive visual cues. Brilliantly played by the voice cast, the adult material takes a smart look at the darker and more exploitative aspects of pop culture, celebrity and fandom, particularly in terms of womanhood, sexualisation and warped notions of "purity". Kon and his artists design the film elegantly, making the most of a limited budget and building to an eye-popping extended chase scene in the trippy final act. A tale of psychosis tailored perfectly to its millennial setting, the bravura result sits comfortably next to art house crack-up classics Persona and Repulsion.

imdb-square

8.0/10

How to watch

Loading

Streaming

Credits

Cast

rolenameMima KirigoeBridget HoffmanRumiWendee LeeTBCGil StarberryEri OchiaiLia SargentTejimaSteve BulenTBCJames LyonTBCFrank BuckTBCSteven Jay Blum

Show more

Crew

rolenameDirectorSatoshi Kon

Details

Theatrical distributor

National Amusements

Released on

2017-10-31

Languages

English | Japanese

Formats

Colour

Ad

Ad

Ad