Looking for Mr. Play-Date

The fetishization of Japanese schoolgirls is neither new nor news, and contemporary Japanese cinema has no shortage of films (or anime series) on the subject. From straight out exploitation (Terrifying Girls' High School), to girls-gone-wild exposés (Shudan Satsujin Club, Bounce Ko-Gals), horror flicks (Ju-Rei), and even lighthearted entertainment (Swing Girls, Linda Linda Linda), there probably isn't a cinematic genre that doesn't have at least one title centered around the uniformed short-skirt and loose sock set. In the 90s, the scandal of enjo kosai (compensated dating) rocked the Japanese media. High school girls were supplementing their pocket money by arranging "play-dates" with older Japanese men, aided by the then-new telekura (telephone clubs) -- a lo-tech predecessor to Facebook or the casual encounters board on Craigslist.  In many/some (depending on who you talk to) cases these dates weren't sexual, and the men were happy to simply have a meal or visit a karaoke bar with a younger girl. Two films from 1998 built around the enjo kosai sensation are Masato Harada's Bounce Ko-Gals, and Love & Pop, the live-action debut by anime superstar Hideaki Anno. The former is a gritty but overly sensationalized tale of teen prostitution that tosses abortion, drugs, yakuza, and a corrupt government official into the mix, all in the course of one night. At the other end of the spectrum is Love & Pop, which, while not entirely without narrative structure, favors a somewhat experimental approach in its depiction of a group of friends over the course of a single summer's day. From its opening moments, the thing you can't fail to notice about Love & Pop is director Anno's (best known as creator of the Neon Genesis Evangelion animated series) use of miniature digital cameras and a hyperkinetic editing style. Every scene appears to have been shot with no fewer than five cameras, with many attached to objects such as sweaters, chopsticks, beer bottles, fans, etc. The editing within each scene, which continually jumps from one camera to the next, feels almost random -- as if Anno left the choice to a computer, as Lars von Trier actually did in The Boss of it All -- and at times the shot length is barely long enough to process the image. There's a remarkably voyeuristic feel to it all -- appropriate given the film's subject. Unlike the films of Shunji Iwai (particularly All About Lily Chou-Chou) which are genuinely sympathetic to the problems that plague Japan's youth culture, Anno doesn't appear to be interested in fashioning detailed character portraits, and the girls of Love & Pop are generic by design. (One of them sports a UPC code tattoo on her hip -- the schoolgirl as commodfied object.) With parents more interested in pursuing their own hobbies than paying attention to the lives of their children, the girls wander the streets of Shibuya, where a different salacious offer awaits them on every street corner. They realize the temporality of their youth, and are determined to make the most of it, even though they describe much of their day-to-day existence as boring. They approach their play-dates with apathetic disinterest -- at times it seems they do it simply because they can. It's only when they are asked to half-chew Muscat grapes (which are the packaged and sold to men with a predilection for....god knows what) that the girls take a moment to consider exactly what it is they are doing. (It's also the only sequence in the film shot in something that approaches a long take.) About halfway in, the film shifts its focus to Hiromi (Asumi Miwa) and her quest to raise 120,000 Yen before 9:00 PM so she can buy a ring. With time a critical factor (Anno intercuts title cards that show us the number of hours remaining, and how much more money she needs to earn), Hiromi agrees to meet up with questionable, unsavory characters who clearly aren't content with simply having a meal or drink. By the time she meets up with Captain EO (Tadanobu Asano), a sociopath obsessed with Coppola's Michael Jackson film, you know things aren't going to turn out too well. It's hard to determine exactly what Anno's intentions are, and the film's voyeuristic gaze (under tables and up skirts) certainly emphasizes the fetishization, but fails to generate any meaningful commentary. Yet there is something effective in his stripped down approach -- the Tokyo of Love & Pop is devoid of teenage boys, leaving the girls alone in sea of older male predators. It succeeds as a quasi-experimental work, but only just. However, if you're interested in learning a thing or two about the problems of contemporary Japanese youth, there are far better alternatives.