Kamikaze Girls

What happens when you cross a non-too-bright girl gang biker with a rococo loving lolita-look inspired teenager? Why, it’s Kamikaze Girls, of course. One of Third Window’s first and very best releases given a second blu-ray outing, so what a lovely reason to upgrade my DVD and remind myself why I originally loved the film.  

Of course, it was possible after the years that I’d return to it and no longer love the film but nah, it was still great.

From the first propulsive moment, when our hero (of sorts) rococo-loving Momoko (Kyoko Fukada) is catapulted into the air, clearly artificial vegetables flying past and boasting a saturated colour palette, the film screams at you that you are not for a moment entering a realist movie. As the biker, Ichiko (Anna Tsuchiya), careens into Momoko’s life, as she looks for knockoff Ver**ce goods, we enter classic opposites attract buddy movie territory but who cares if it’s that when what we are presented with is such gloriously entertaining fun.  

As you may have suspected, subtlety is not the order of the day; then again it is not uncouth; part of the joy of Kamikaze Girls is its ability to create a world that can (in)sensibly allow these two teenage girls to exist and maybe even become friends. From the first moments as Momoko explains her life, the tone is set: Momoko knows what she wants: she wants clothes, rococo clothing, she wants a life of luxury and who cares if she needs sell her useless father a sob story for money to buy more deliriously delightful attire. We’re going all out riotous and if anything the question from the outset is can director, Tetsuya Nakashima (Confessions) keep the pace up, maintain the invention? The honest answer is yes, he bloody well can.

True, some of the styllistic elements of the film will come as no surprise: an anime sequence involving a legendary biker, Momoko talking to the camera to announce her initial boredom and bafflement at Ichiko continuing to appear in her frilly life, but it just works as the tone is spot on, it is just the right side of unsubtle and is always endearing; plus the two teens have a sort of overlap, Momoko has a backbone to her that is not always immediately apparent, just as Ichiko has her own angels, that she adores and is capable of her own kind of sensitivity, arguably more than Momoko who is even showed as being distant as a small child, when faced with her mother separating from her yakuza-wannabe father, suggests she goes away, get breast implants and enter a beauty pageant: no tearful ending for Momoko, just move on, move forward towards rococo dreams.  

Visually, with the colour so saturated, it’s always a joyful film to watch, and the energy and pace never for a moment let up. Most importantly our characters always evolve just enough, reveal aspects of themselves as they are surprised to find a friend where they would not have expected, but which is initially based on necessity. Anna Tsuchiya as Ichiko (I do love her in Sakuran) chews the scenery and spits it out, all in your face, don’t give a shit that hides a core of principles and respect for tradition. It’s the kind of performance that in a different film would be over the top but here it’s spot on, just as Kyoko Fukada as Momoko captures the right balance of self-absorbed lolita, interested in surfaces but is also self-reliant and is in her own way definitely no shrinking violet. Then again the whole cast play exactly as they are needed, though perhaps the most ludicrously joyous is Sadawo Abe’s absurdly quiffed yakuza, who in some ways emphasises the script’s sophistication because he could be a smile inducing yakuza with mad hair but eventually becomes important to the plot.  That matters as there’s no fat here, nothing that is just for laughs and the film has humour to spare.  

The point is that Kamikaze Girls even after nearly 20-years is still a riotously entertaining film, in the way so few ever are because it all seems so effortless, so unforced. It’s magnificently artificial in its filmmaking, the kind of artifice that embraces the unreal so wholeheartedly as to stick two fingers up at realism, and I for one dare anyone not to find Kamikaze Girls anything other than a sheer unadulterated pleasure for all of its 100-minutes.  

This was perhaps my first Third Window film back in the day and it’s still one of their absolute best.