Written by Tetsuya Nakashima, the award-winning writer-director of ‘Kamikaze Girls’ and ‘Memories Of Matsuko’, and starring Yuri Nakamura (The Grudge: Girl In Black; Sakuran), Hiroki Narimiya (Sakuran) and Mari Hamada (Memories Of Matsuko), LALA PIPO, the directorial debut of Masayuki Miyano, takes a quirky and comedic trawl through the gutters of the Japanese porn industry in the company of six disparate characters whose tales overlap in unexpected ways.
Nakashima’s script is based on a collection of short stories by celebrated author Okuda Hideo, the title originating from one character’s mispronunciation of an American tourist’s observation that Tokyo sure has ‘a lot of people’.
Among those people is Hiroshi, a slovenly loner, desperate for a girlfriend and who has conversations with his penis (hilariously played by a furry green Muppet). Tomoko is a young and pretty shop assistant who inadvertently finds her way into the sex business by way of hooking before trying her hand (so to speak) as being a porn star thanks to the intervention of ‘talent scout’ Kenji. Then there’s Yoshie, a mature wife and mother with a secret that will soon be revealed, Koichi, whose fantasy alter-ego is a porno Power Ranger called Captain Bonita, and Sayuri, an overweight young woman whose ambition is to be an anime voiceover artist but who has already carved herself a unique career in the adult entertainment world.
As these characters’ fates are interwoven, each finds their own vision of hope and humanity in the darkest, unlikeliest – and stickiest – of places.
Shot in the same vibrant, candy-coloured, hyper-surreal style that will be familiar to fans of Tetsuya Nakashima’s directorial works, Masayuki Miyano’s debut feature is a fun, off-beat and totally unpredictable romp through Tokyo’s very own planet porno.
