Critics reviews

Iwai creates Yuichi’s world as much through disembodied moments of sight and sound as through action, building to a surprising stab of melancholy. Gorgeously shot tableaux of random adolescent brutality are interrupted by flashes of computer garble and chat-room talk, backed by ”Lily’s” music, with its blend of Debussy-like arpeggios and Enya-like sighing.

In the interstices of these fluxes, All About Lily Chou-Chou transforms into a mood piece, self-consciously eschewing account and explanation, less concerned with analysing our bafflement than it is with simply our bafflement itself, as if with the detached curiosity of an observing alien.

[The film] is so enigmatic, oblique and meandering that it's like coded religious texts that requires monks to decipher... This movie is maddening. It conveys a simple message in a visual style that is willfully overwrought.

"All About Lily Chou-Chou" requires some patience. Once you get into its rhythm... the movie becomes a heady experience.

[The film] is beautiful to look at, as well as anarchic and contemporary... Even if you haven't a clue what is going on, the journey is stimulating.

It's a convoluted scenario, but the film's power lies in its understanding of the universal juvenile need for acceptance. This enigmatic film hits teenage alienation dead centre.

It is certainly a film with its longueurs, and is often frustratingly opaque. Yet it passes a distinctive cinematic test which other, more easily watchable films fail: it stays with you. Its images and quirky, cranky design return to the mind's eye long after the final credits.

A film that's flawed and brilliant in equal measure. Fashioning this tale of teenage alienation into a much grander project about pop culture, technology and the breakdown of human relationships, "Lily Chou-Chou" further proves Japan's growing reputation for producing haunting and disturbing cinema.

Shunji Iwai’s “All About Lily Chou-Chou” is bravura, ambitious and profoundly disturbing. It is also a daunting, demanding experience, one whose complex structure makes it a challenge to track despite literate subtitles... Although the film’s narrative thread may prove chronically elusive, Iwai’s depiction of what life can be like for far too many teens comes across loud and clear.

"All About Lily Chou-Chou," a sprawling and adventurous tale of teen alienation, might just be the movie that pushes the Japanese new wave out of the film-geek ghetto... I loved "All About Lily Chou-Chou" despite its problems, or at least I greatly admired its crystalline, high-definition video look, its explosive feel, its wealth of ideas, its willingness to go anywhere and do anything.

Iwai's arty self-consciousness takes some getting used to, but as the film slides inexorably toward a devastating third act, it seems to tighten its grasp on the sad, painful remove that governs its young characters' lives... "All About Lily Chou-Chou" takes a wayward route into their addled minds that a more conventional film would never find.

"Lily Chou-Chou" is a precision-made mystery tour, and possibly the loveliest film ever shot on high-def video... [The film] is itself an overripe pop song, mourning the despoiling tragedies of pre-adulthood and the infuriating inadequacy of nostalgia... It’s a uniquely lonely film, and one of the year’s most memorable.