Love & Pop
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Love & Pop was director Anno Hideaki's first live action film, an adaptation of Ryu Murakami's novel, Topaz II. It somewhat follows the film Tokyo Decadence, an adaptation of Topaz I filmed by Murakami himself. Love & Pop was filmed almost entirely on hand-held digital cameras, and contains some very unusual camera work, including many different mounted camera positions, such as on a model train riding on tracks. The film also flips from widescreen to 4:3 aspect, distorts (with effects such as a fisheye lens), confuses, and makes use of overlays stacked in layers to convey the character's emotions. Some people may think this style is innovative, while others may find it amateurish. Others see it as a combination of the two, a purposeful 'amateurism' to make the film more 'real', in a partial Cinéma vérité style.
The film follows 4 highschool girls who engage in what the Japanese call enjo kosai, or compensated dating. This is a practice in Japan where older businessmen pay teenage girls for prostitution, or, more commonly, to simply hang out with them.
An official English DVD was released in 2004 by Kino Video.
External sites
- Kino Video (http://www.kino.com)ja:ラブ＆ãƒãƒƒãƒ—