Love & Pop
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| Love & Pop | |
|---|---|
| Directed by | Hideaki Anno |
| Produced by | Toshimichi Otsuki |
| Written by | Hideaki Anno Akio Satsukawa |
| Starring | Asumi Miwa Kirari Hirono Kudō Yukie Nakama |
| Running time | 110 minutes |
| Language | Japanese |
| IMDb profile | |
Love & Pop (ラブ&ポップ Rabu & Poppu) is director Hideaki Anno's first live action film, an adaptation of Ryu Murakami's novel, Topaz II. Released in 1998, it somewhat follows the film Tokyo Decadence, an adaptation of Topaz I filmed by Murakami himself. 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 model train riding on tracks. The film also flips from widescreen to 4:3 aspect, distorts (with effects such as a fisheye lens), confuses, and makes use of overlays stacked in layers to convey the character's emotions. Some people may think this style is innovative, while others may find it amateurish. Others see it as a combination of the two, a purposeful "amateurism" to make the film more "real", in a partial cinéma vérité style.
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[edit] Story
The film follows four Japanese high school girls who engage in enjo kosai, or compensated dating. This is a practice in Japan where older businessmen pay teenage girls for prostitution, or more commonly, to simply spend time with them. The movie is also a coming-of-age story. The main character, Hiromi, does not have the direction in life that her friends already have. Hiromi's friends were going to buy Hiromi a ring, but Hiromi refuses to take all the money because she doesn't want her friends to be jealous. Hiromi goes on dates by herself to get money for the ring. She gets in over her head, as the brilliant cameo by Tadanobu Asano as "Captain EO" shows. Hiromi falls too far into the world of enjo-kosai because she is trying to hold onto a "friends forever" vision of the past. She can't move forward.
[edit] Availability
An official English DVD was released in 2004 by Kino on Video.
[edit] Staff
- Director: Hideaki Anno
- Original Story: Ryu Murakami
- Script: Akio Satsukawa
[edit] Cast
- Hiromi Yoshii: Asumi Miwa
- Chisa Noda: Kirari
- Nao Yokoi: Hirono Kudō
- Chieko Takahashi: Yukie Nakama
- Mitsuru Hirata
- Mitsuru Fukikoshi
- Moro Morooka
- Tooru Tezuka
- Ikkei Watanabe
- Tadanobu Asano
- Kotono Mitsuishi
- Akira Ishida
- Verbal Dialing Information Voice: Megumi Hayashibara
- Nana Okata
- Leo Morimoto
