Something changes during the trip, which is haunted by odd events and the presence of a slightly menacing drifter. Hoshino finances the jaunt by ripping off a gang of punks who've just robbed a man in a parking lot. Over summer vacation, Hoshino, Yuichi and their friends long to vacation in Okinawa, but can't afford it. He hosts a website devoted to his idol and strikes up an online flirtation with a girl who signs herself "blue cat" - the film's action is frequently interrupted by typed exchanges between anonymous Lily fans, who blossom in their shared obsession with the minutia of her life and work. Their friendship isn't rooted in shared interests or background, just proximity, but Hoshino introduces Yuichi to pop idoru Lily Chou-Chou, who was born Decem(the day Mark David Chapman murdered John Lennon) and seduces her fans with visions from "the ether." Yuichi becomes devoted to Lily, whose breathy, druggy delivery and spacey lyrics suggest an unholy amalgam of Tori Amos, Kate Bush, Fiona Apple and Bjork, and her music provides refuge from an increasingly hostile world. During his freshman year, he befriends transfer student Shusuke Hoshino (Shugo Oshinari), a rich kid tormented by feelings of failure. Slight, quiet and ordinary, Yuichi Hasumi (Hayato Ichihara) lives in an isolated small town with his pregnant mother and her boyfriend.
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Friendships are formed and dissolved, and youngsters struggle to break free of the enforced conformity of the Japanese school system (which extends to uniforms and regulation hair cuts) by trying on new and sometimes disturbing identities. Languid and fragmented, this opaquely bleak story of teenage anomie takes place over the course of two years, as a group of high-schoolers make the awkward transition from children to quasi-adults amidst academic pressure, schoolyard bullying and parental indifference. This film was screened at the 2001 Toronto Film Festival. Things come to a head tragically at a long awaited Lily Chou-Chou concert. Yuichi's suffocating situation at school leads him to consider suicide, something he confesses to "blue cat" - his only confidant. At home he finds sanctuary with his favorite singer Lily Chou-Chou, for whom he has devoted a website called "Liliphilia." One day, he encounters on the net a fellow Lily-phile who goes by the handle "blue cat." As Hoshino's power grows, he demands that Yuichi tail fellow classmate Shiori Tsuda (Yu Aoi), who he is pimping out to older men. In order to scrape up the cash to meet Hoshino's daily extortion demand, Yuichi resorts to petty theft and shoplifting. At school he is beaten up and harassed by his former friend Hoshino. The film centers on Yuichi Hasumi (Hayato Ichihara), an eighth grader who lives in a sleepy town in rural Japan with his mother, her boyfriend, and the boyfriend's son. Wildly popular filmmaker Shunji Iwai breaks a three-year hiatus following his less than successful April Story with this elliptical drama about teenaged alienation, violence, and celebrity.