Kamikaze Girls (2004)
Tetsuya Nakashima’s candy-coloured adaptation of Shimotsuma Story, Novala Takemoto’s cult “light novel” (the Japanese equivalent of young adult fiction), essentially offers an introduction to Japanese girl fashion tribes, which are a lot more fun than the well-worn cliques in American highschool movies.
Momoko (Kyoko Fukada) lives in a deadbeat rural region of Japan with her feisty gran and loser dad, but this doesn’t stop her obsessing over Rococo-era France, grooving to Johann Strauss and dressing like a Marie Antoinette shepherdess in frocks from a Tokyo clothes store called Baby, The Stars Shine Bright. This is a real store which caters to the so-called Lolita tribe, members of which deck themselves out with bonnets, parasols and petticoats in a bid to resemble the sort of crinoline-clad dolls one normally associates with kitsch toilet roll covers.
Woman or doll? – Momoko may look like a doll, but she is most definitely a young woman. How can you tell? Nakashima’s film is boppy live action with outbreaks of anime and cartoon-like violence, but, like its heroine, the story is not nearly as fluffy and mindless as it first appears. Momoko values her status as an aloof loner, but is won over by aggressive but genuine overtures of friendship from a biker chick called Ichiko. In fact, this is an altogether splendid study of female friendship and empowerment.