Storyline Mima leaves the idol group CHAM, in order to pursue her dream as an actress. Mima climbs up the rocky road to success by performing as rape victims and posing nude for magazines, but is haunted by her reflections of the past.
Opening Weekend: $9,600
(USA)
(22 August 1999)
(1 Screen)
Gross: $99,389
(USA)
(19 December 1999)
Technical Specs
Runtime:
Did You Know?
Trivia: Darren Aronofsky owns the American filming rights to this movie, which he purchased for $59,000, just so he could film the now infamous "bath scene" with Jennifer Connelly in his own film
Requiem for a Dream. The staged rape scene in
Perfect Blue also inspired a scene toward the end of Aronofsky's film in which a group of perverted men circle around and cheer on a vulgar sexual event.
Goofs:
Continuity:
In the English dub version, Cham sings their song at the beginning in English. Later on, when the writer is waiting for the elevator, the radio is playing the song in Japanese.
Quotes: Mima Kirigoe:
[Talking to the audience after the incident]
The truth is that today more than ever, I wanted to have a good time with you. Yamashiro:
These thing is told by the big stars, but not by you!...
[he tries to drop a can to Mima, but he's stopped by the guard ]
User Review
Solid, well-executed anime
Rating:
Perfect Blue is a very strange film. It's anime, but it's set in circa-1995
modern Tokyo, with a story in which everything could be explained in terms
of natural phenomena and present-day technology. Furthermore, it's a
psychological thriller, a genre which probably hasn't ever been done with
animation before.
But even if Japan's animators dabbled in this genre more often, Perfect Blue
would still be a bizarre film. It starts off as a fairly conventional
thriller about a teen pop singer who may be the target of a stalker, but
then the movie goes completely insane, assaulting the viewer with rapid
changes of scene, perspective, and context until we simply don't know what
to believe anymore. This is done so subtly and gradually that we become
completely trapped in the movie's spell, and we end up just staring at the
screen in horror, helpless to stop the nightmarish events from unfolding.
Rarely has any movie so effectively conveyed the lunatic terror of a
character who has lost touch with reality, and once the movie is over, all
you can do is just sit there and try to figure everything out. Have fun
with it. It's a good head scratch.
Unfortunately, the last minute or so of the movie is much too sappy and
uplifting (especially the music on the end credits), cheapening the
significance of everything that has gone before. But as a whole, Perfect
Blue is an incredibly haunting thriller, a scathing look at the world of
showbusiness, and a very worthwhile film.
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