Love & Pop (1998)

Waste of time

Instant Favorite.

a film so unique, intoxicating and bizarre that it not only demands another viewing, but is also forgivable as a satirical comedy where the jokes eventually take the back seat.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Enjo Kosai (compensated dating) is nothing new, and if you go to Shibuya, even now there are girls who comes and asks you for your "support" (literally translates to Enjo). There's a market for it as seen on this movie, and it has become easy way for high school girls to gain money.Four girls are friends at school. Each has reason to go on Enjo Kosai. Hiromi is new to all this, but she first starts with going to karaoke house with middle aged man with her friends. Gradually, she starts to do it on her own. Her parents of course knows nothing about this. Hiromi has a goal of making enough money to buy an expensive ring she saw. She thinks its not so difficult, and gets dating appointments over phone. But reality of life is about to give her a lesson.This type of activity is very easy in Japan where there are many karaoke booth, and so called love hotels. It's easy to get lost in the crowd and blend in as not to be conspicuous. All the girls take full advantage of the society they live in. But such activities are not without risk, and that seems to be the point if there's any about this movie.Movies about prostitution has been made before and this is another modern take on it. The movie provides inside look of Japanese society, and is an interesting story to watch.

This film is about pedophilia, perversion and prostitution through the eyes of 15-17 year old high school girls. It was filmed entirely using mini digital cameras mounted in bizarre places (like in a bowl of soup, on a pair of chopsticks and up a girl's skirt).OK, if that didn't scare you off, then please continue reading.It's a heavy, disturbing subject right off the bat. That plus the unconventional camera-work rings of "pretentious art house film". But somehow Hideaki Anno pulls it off. I suspect that it's because this is a sort of *tongue-in-cheek* pretentious art house film. Unlike certain snotty Cannes Film Festival contenders who seem to take themselves too seriously, Anno deliberately goes way over the top, as if to say, "Yes, I am a very strange man who likes to put cameras in microwave ovens." As a result, the mood of this film is a cross between CLOCKWORK ORANGE and AIRPLANE 2. Take it or leave it.You might be wondering why I rated it only 6/10 despite the fact that I seem to be praising it. You see, I've rated it on my special Hideaki-Annometer which grades on a much tougher scale. True, it's a worthwhile film. But relative to some of his other work, this comes across as a bit experimental and fractured.His later work SHIKI-JITSU is the perfection of what we see here. You'll even notice many recurring trademarks such as train tracks, red lighting and "countdown" intertitles. In the two years following LOVE & POP, Hideaki Anno mastered the style he dabbled in here.But oh wait I forgot about the music. (I may have to bump my rating up to a 7.) As with SHIKI-JITSU, he matches the perfect doleful piano pieces with poetic voice-over narration. In particular, I recognized a few Chopin sonatas, Debussy's "Claire de lune" and 1 or 2 other haunting melodies. Despite the vulgarity of the subject matter, these classical/romantic pieces provide a very interesting counterbalance. And I believe that is the whole theme of the film: the precarious balance between perversion and innocence.It's certainly a memorable film. But it requires some patience. Be sure to stick around for the 2nd half when things get REALLY weird.

Love & Pop is simply a mind blowing flick with lots to say. To start with Hideaki Anno is without a doubt an artistic genius, Neon Genesis Evangelion leaves no doubt about it. In here Hideaki Anno takes us in a tour about school girls, perverts and compensated dating. The story takes us trough something that happens in japan, called compensated dating, normal guys or perverts pay school girls to date them, "with" or "without" second intentions. This innocent girls do this in a regular basis to get money for their personal materialistic needs, buy clothes,rings etc. You see them talking about boys, school ,life and feelings. You get it all and identify with lots of thoughts that are thrown at you just like the existential dilemmas in NGE, some are deep thoughts that we are not used to put in words. Hideaki Anno at the same time he tells the story takes us on a visual tour, i think he has used all is NGE crazy cameraworks and put it on real tape, and invented some more, all the follow cameras angles, fish eye lenses and whatever more you could imagine, even cameras in a microwave and in soup bowl. It's just something to see, cant be described, it is excellent, and he filmed it all with mini DV cameras switching between 4:3 and 16:9 like he doesn't care for rules or limitations.(SPOILERS) Continuing with the story the main character Hiromi sees a ring she wants to buy, and goes out alone doing compensated dating for it, something they never did, they never dated alone. She ends up on a date with Captain EO (Tadanobu Asano) that will teach her a valuable lesson about life and about what she does. And right here is the value of the film, a boring tale about innocent school girls makes lots of sense because of a few minutes of film. The girls are not that innocent, everything trought the movie seems so normal in their perspective, and they seem so innocent that we are blinded. And in the end it makes sense. Captain EO shows an aggressive face suddenly but spares Hiromi saying "You're here naked, and you are killing someone half dead with grief over it." Meaning she has value, and someone gives her value, but she is not seeing it or experiencing, she's not thinking about what she is looking for. She is being selfish and blind, and whoever gives her value will be hurt for what she does. I think the idea speaks for itself.Hideaki Anno is a great director, and i am looking forward to see more movies directed by him. I gave this 9 out of 10.

at first i didnt think much of this movie. i skimmed through it and was getting ready to delete it but decided to watch it once out of boredom. The first half of the movie was what i expected, boring japanese teenage schoolgirl's life accompanied by crazy camera anglges, very reminisce of a shoddy indi film... the characters that paid for the girls to accompany them were definitely colorful and i doubt real ppl like that in the same situation would do the same. Right till the point when i was bored out of my mind watching, in comes the last character, Captain EO... what happens afterwards totally changed my mind about this movie. Everything just comes together after that one big scene, and im like ****, why didnt i notice that before..