Satoshi Kon’s animated thriller makes the scrutiny of a pop star feel frighteningly intimate. We recommend it for its sharp account of fame and its disorienting images, with reservations about the final explanation.
Leaving a pop group for acting ought to be a career decision. In Perfect Blue, it gives other people an excuse to claim a say in who Mima Kirigoe is allowed to become. Satoshi Kon makes a frightening, tightly controlled thriller out of that presumption, even when the story starts to resist a tidy explanation. At 81 minutes, it has little patience for easing us into danger. Its subject is the entitlement that can turn admiration into surveillance.
Junko Iwao voices Mima with a vulnerability that makes the uncertainty painful rather than merely intriguing. The performance gives us someone to worry about while Kon makes it harder to know which images deserve our confidence. We can follow the wish to start a different working life even when we cannot follow every change in perception. That simple wish keeps the film close to a person whose distress could easily have become an excuse for elaborate tricks.
Hisao Shirai’s cinematography uses reflections, tilted views and uncomfortably close faces to make watching feel intrusive. We felt cornered. The close-ups did it: Mima is already being watched by people who think they know her, and these images make it difficult to keep a comfortable distance ourselves. Animation lets the film disturb our bearings without announcing a clean break from ordinary surroundings. Kon makes that uncertainty frightening because the person caught inside it still needs to get on with her life.
Editor Harutoshi Ogata keeps the shifts between perception and imagination difficult to anticipate. We repeatedly find ourselves accepting an image before we have had time to question where it belongs. Masahiro Ikumi’s music adds pressure, though the drawings are quite capable of making us uneasy without assistance. The cutting denies us the pause in which we might decide we are safely outside Mima’s confusion. Following these shifts takes concentration, and the film makes good use of the effort it demands.
Sadayuki Murai’s screenplay is shrewd about the awkwardness of a performer changing the terms on which she is known. The pop career matters because it explains why Mima’s image seems to belong to everyone except Mima. That gives the familiar woman-in-danger thriller something specific to worry about. The internet gives that unwanted attention another way into her life. Kon understands how frightening it can be to have strangers take a close interest in your decisions, especially when they believe they should be making them.
The reservation is the attempt to make the confusion add up. Murai’s dialogue can be blunt, and the eventual explanation asks for more belief than the film has earned. We will not describe it, but Kon presses for certainty after being so persuasive about Mima’s inability to find any. It is a familiar weakness in psychological thrillers, and it stands out here because the watching, the unwanted attention and the fear have all been convincing.
For anyone who likes psychological thrillers, it is worth accepting that weakness. Kon takes the old stalker story seriously enough to ask what the watcher thinks he owns, and keeps Mima’s distress in view. Give it your full attention, and leave yourself something quieter to do afterwards.
