For all that, the film's basic outline isn't especially confusing: 'All About Lily Chou-Chou' is mainly the story of Yuichi (Hayato Ichihara), a moody, near-silent teenage boy who's obsessed with a pop singer named, yep, Lily Chou-Chou. Scenes don't always occur in chronological order, and some remain entirely mysterious. Two characters are killed and another is raped, and on all three occasions we basically have to infer (or guess) what has happened.

For a while another boy, a charismatic, cruel James Dean type named Hoshino (Shugo Oshinari), seems to become the main character. Then there's a long sideways journey in the middle, when the film temporarily becomes a homemade video of an Okinawa vacation that ends with a near-drowning while the camera sloshes around haphazardly in the surf. Iwai's portrait of Japanese high-school life is dense with compelling detail. In between his sessions in an online chat-room devoted to Lily - rendered as a series of explosive intertitles that interrupt and sometimes overlay the action - Yuichi must navigate a landscape of warring bullies and gangs, sadistic and seductive packs of girls and various grades of clueless, harried adults. Ichihara is a handsome, slight kid who can simultaneously convey curiosity and sullenness. If Yuichi is pretty much the classic wounded adolescent of world cinema, transposed to the age of chat rooms and digital video, that doesn't stop us from pining for a time when he will be less awkward and his life a little easier. Indeed, as we gradually piece together, Yuichi is full of unresolved longing for a long-haired girl named Kuno (Ayumi Ito), a classical pianist who favors Debussy and is herself a pariah among the bitchy girl-cliques.

All about lily chou chou full movie