Perfect Blue is a movie that I've heard about only in the context of Black Swan being very heavily inspired by it.
I wasn't a fan of Black Swan so I never felt the need to watch Perfect Blue. It looked alright, it was largely psychological horror from what I understand and it didn't seem up my alley.
They recently released it at Cineplex and so Goran saw it and he loved it. He said it was worth seeing in theatres and that it was a 5/5 movie for him.
This was a pretty glowing recommendation so I watched it at home. I had bought tickets for the movie but missed it, so I ended up watching it in the basement that night.
The movie starts off with Mima and her two friends being in a girl group called CHAM. They do one song and it's a bit awkward in that everyone in the audience is a guy. There doesn't seem to be any women or children. One guy in particular looks particularly grotesque. He is obssessed with Mima and CHAM and picks a fight with some guys who throw cans at the girls.
Mima stops the fighting to tell the audience this is her last show and that she will be an actress.
The audience doesn't seem sad or actually seem to care. They simply talk as if she is making a mistake or why they would care. It was strange.
Once the show is done we learn that idols aren't making much and that it's time for Mima to transition to something else. This is something that she wants and its shown how dedicated she is even when she has just one line.
Her manager is Rumi who seems to have Mima's best interests at heart and wants her to continue being an idol. Mima had come to sing so this was a bit sad.
Someone gives Mima a fan letter saying they can see her room and that person runs a blog as well. Mima begins to feel afraid and this is heightened when she gets a fan letter that blows up.
Mima eventually goes to the blog and finds someone who writes as if they are her and they know way too much information. They know things like how she steps off the train platform and where she went the previous day.
We can see its the ogre looking guy. he seems to have some sort of illness as he also tries to sound like Mima and he's disappointed that shes going to become an actress.
Mima gets a larger role in the tv show and the big thing is that her character gets raped at a strip club. This is actually a bit terrifying because it's supposed to be fake but watching it feels real. When the director says cut, things go to normal but there is always this fear. I honestly expected the worst.
She acts fine right after the scene but when she gets home, she finds that her fish have died. Suddenly she breaks down and cries how this is not what she wanted. This was one of the highlight scenes.
This is when the blogging gets dark and Mima's own mental health begins to suffer. She starts to imagine her idol self wanting to come back and being disappointed in this version of Mima. The blogger writes about this isn't who she is and that someone has replaced her and that she needs help. The blog version of Mima begs for help.
Mima ends up also doing a shoot where she ends up naked for a photographer. The photos are then released and she breaks down further. The image of who Mima is and who she was and who she wants to be are all conflicting with each other and I think this is what leads to the hallucinations.
The ogre looking guy kills the writer of the TV show as he wrote the rape scene. He then kills the photographer. He then attacks Mima herself and tries to rape her. She pushes herself away and finds help. By the time she gets back the guy is gone. However we find out him and the owner of the agency both dead.
Now we don't know who the true villain is. At this point I thought it was Mima. Some sort of split personality thing.
Rumi and Mima go home and there we find Mima's fish swimming and her home is completely back to normal after her breakdown. We didn't see Mima fix anything up. We then see Mima turn away and when she turns back we see into the mirror. We see a fatter version of Mima and thats when it hits. Rumi is the other Mima.
Rumi was an idol that had aged out of the business and became a manager. She manages Mima and somewhere along the way she ended up seeing herself in Mima. She cried when Mima got raped and hated it. Now we see her dressed in Mima's clothes thinking that shes the real one.
She wants to kill Mima and take her place.
We get an amazing scene of an angelic Mima chasing the real one and in the glass windows we see Rumi running out of breath with rage and insanity.
We see the angelic Mima hopping casually but Rumi must be throwing herself off things to jump faster.
Mima is eventually saved when a truck almost hits Rumi. Mima pushes her and herself out of the way but both require hospitalization.
With that the movie is largely over. We then find out that Rumi is now in a mental ward where she thinks shes Mima. This parallels the tv show that Mima was actually in. We see Mima with long hair now and she seems to have become a successful actress. She must have pulled it together after she lost so many people around her.
Goran thought the movie was 5/5. To me this movie is largely treading the same ground that I've already seen. This is mostly due to this movie being first and inspiring copy cats. However Serial Experiments Lain I think does this whole thing better and it came out around the same time, in 1998. I wonder if there was something in the air in 90s about this idea of the real self and crazy people.
I'd give this movie a 3/5. It is quite pretty and it does hold up but I feel like I've seen better versions of the play out already.