Kamikaze Girls

Kamikaze Girls

Starring: Kyoko Fukada, Anna Tsuchiya, Hiroyuki Miyasako, Sadao Abe

Directed by: Tetsuya Nakashima

Reviewed by: Conor Flynn






• Trailers
• Interviews with the cast

After the bleakness of ‘Memories of Matsuko’, this reviewer initially approached director Nakashima’s earlier work with weariness. Thankfully ‘Kamikaze Girls’ is a lot less harsh than the films title suggests, however, that doesn’t make it easier to watch. If anything, it is even more alienating than the latter film. Why? Well maybe it’s this reviewer’s lack of knowledge of Japanese pop culture. One thing is for definite though; ‘Kamikaze Girls’ is aimed at the teenage female market and no-one other than the teenage female market.

The story is about Momoko (Fukada), a seventeen year old girl with an obsessive interest in ‘Lolita’ fashion, a variation on 18th Century French Rococo art. To fund her expensive, self absorbed habit, she sells her father’s imitation ‘designer’ wear. Eventually she comes into contact with Ichigo (Tsuchiya), a rebellious ‘Yanki’ biker girl. Together they form a relationship which sees them encounter an embroiderer and biker gang amongst others…

Kamikaze Girls isn’t the most cohesive film in the world. It takes a good ninety minutes of this one hundred and two minute long film to come to the conclusion that devoting your life to designer labels is less important than keeping your friends and childhood (though the epilogue completely contradicts this idea). The film is as empty as it sounds as the story meanders all over the place; we simply follow the girls around in a series of random events. Also, there is little coherency to the film, for example, at the beginning we are told that Momoko no-longer wants to live, yet when it comes to explaining why this is towards the films closure, it all comes across as contradictory and surreal for the sake of being surreal. Sure, Momoko is a teenager and therefore open to contradictions and day dreaming, but that doesn’t excuse the film from sending out mixed messages.

The DVD itself is pretty poor. The picture quality is heavily compressed, pixelated and blurred, with even a noticeable amount of ghosting and burnt in subtitles. This is a shame as the film, which is heavy in rich visual colours, certainly deserves better treatment than this. The sound, in 2.0, is clear and without any problems. There are two extras included; a number of trailers and ‘interviews with the cast’. The latter is informative but slim at seven minutes in length, but it’s still better than no extras at all.

It’s hard to recommend this DVD. The film plays like the antithesis of superficiality but ruins it all through a litter of contradictions, while the DVD itself is well below average. Rent before buying.