Tetsuya Nakashima's Kamikaze Girls (2004) is even crazier than the vague title suggests: the story focuses on Momoko (played by Kyoko Fukada) is a girl obsessed with Lolita fashion and Rococo. She lives with her "useless" (as she describes him herself) father and totally bonkers grandmother. Eventually she meets and becomes friends with Anna Tsuchiya's Ichigo who is a true yanki girl: blunt, violent and rebellious.
Let's face it, the idea of putting a yanki and a lolita together is absurd - and the film makes the most of it while it maintains its farcical and metafictional phase. However, at some point the film begins to take itself seriously and simply falls flat because there is simply no way it could possibly work. Luckily the climax is funny, though. I appreciate the film's pure spontaneity and wild humor so greatly that I have to admit I enjoyed watching the film. It's a shame Nakashima changed the tone of the film in the later half because it makes the characters frustratingly pseudo-complex instead of being great comic relief.
The film's form is sadly messy: while its costume design and cinematography provide a lot to the silly atmosphere, the form becomes too formless in the end and it's only baffling. The editing is erratic in a way that doesn't really fit to the content. It is overstylized without a formal focus.
Kamikaze Girls is a funny but shamefully unbalanced and a bit flimsy film. It's worth watching if you're looking for the absurdities of contemporary Japanese cinema or if you simply want to laugh - a lot. Just be prepared for the change of tone.
Score: 5 out of 10
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