Kamikaze Girls

[asakiyume]

Someone out in the wide Internet suggested that I watch Kamikaze Girls (2004, Tetsuya Nakashima: Shimotsuma monogatari in Japanese), and I did--rather, we did; we watched it as a family--and it was very odd and very great. The protagonists have both escaped the dreary roles they were born into and created satisfying personas for themselves: Momoko, the daughter of a small-time failed gangster and a floozie who abandoned the family early on, has gotten into what she terms the 18th-century Rococo look, but which we know better as Japan's Lolita look: over-the-top frilly, fancy dresses. She's doing her best to remain untouched by life in backwater, style-compromised Shimotsuma, where she currently lives.

Momoko


Then there's Ichiko/go, timid and unpopular as a kid, who was transformed by a chance encounter with the leader of a girl biker gang into a confident, slang-slinging, head-butting, bike-riding tough.

Ichiko


Momoko advertises some of her dad's old counterfeit Versace/Universal Studios gear (two great tastes that go great together! with Versace rendered as "Versach") to raise some money, and Ichiko comes to buy it--and then insists on a friendship between herself and Momoko, despite Momoko's diligent attempts to completely ignore her. Ichiko is emotional and romantic, Momoko is cool and aloof (she offers Ichiko a cabbage at one point and tells her it can be her new best friend. Ichiko doesn't take it well).

Ichiko tells high-color [this movie is VERY high-color--as you can tell from the stills, it's actually supersaturated] tales of key figures in her gang's history, but it's Momoko, who's had a keen understanding of human nature from a young age (dismissing her mother with the advice that she go off and enter a beauty pageant, as time's a-wasting and her mom's life is passing by¹) who proves the master storyteller, saving the day at the end (though she herself is saved by Ichigo's aggressive affection, which provides sunshine for the first shoots of outward-directed love Momoko experiences).

The side-characters are fun too, from Momoko's eyepatch-wearing grandma to the gangster known as "the unicorn," thanks to his prodigious coiffure.



Watch the trailer. If you like the look, you'll love the film. It funny and sweet without being cloying.

¹Her mom takes her advice.

Comments

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Yeah, there's really something about how tranquilly heartless Momoko is. We're used to heartless women in fiction/drama, but usually they're motivated by powerful emotion or are seen by the male gaze as vain, whereas in Momoko's case you can see it as a retreat from everything sweaty,messy, and crude (and unreliable)--i.e., her natal family--and into calm, self-sufficient, decorative loveliness, untouched by all the--cow poop! And Jusco shopping. And we're used to seeing tough guys (or gals) with tender hearts, but Ichigo doesn't bury hers very deeply--she's pretty warmhearted with Momoko right from the start.

Yeah, good film :-)

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

Yes, exactly! There's no malice behind Momoko's heartlessness. It's self-protective.