Film: Lala Pipo
Release date: 8th February 2010
Certificate: 18
Running time: 93 mins
Director: Masayuki Miyano
Starring: Tomoko Murakami, Hiroki Narimiya, Saori Hara, Yuri Nakamura, Takashi Yoshimura
Genre: Comedy
Studio: Third Window
Format: DVD
Country: Japan
Lala Pipo (or, A Lot Of People) is a Japanese comedy, based on a book of the same name by author Okuda Hideo. At the helm is director Masayuki Miyano, and Testsuya Nakashima, whose screenplay attempts to translate the source material’s adult take on modern Tokyo, without compromising the novel’s darkly-skewed sense of humour.
The resulting film feels like a severely misjudged effort; whose rendering of sexuality and gender roles are positively archaic. Those problems are further compounded by a set of budget production values that fail to fill the deficit left by crudely drawn characters and an uninteresting plot.
“There are two types of people in this world, people who have sex and people who watch people have sex.” So suggests Kenji Kurino, played by a suitably repellent Hiroki Narimiya, in the film’s opening sequence. In a weave of short narrative arcs, the lives of seemingly unconnected people come together, as their sexual exploits (or lack thereof) bring them into contact with each other.
Kenji Kurino is a man whose job it is to recruit people into Tokyo’s sex industry, wooing potential candidates into a life of prostitution and sexual exploitation with his good looks and flattery. Yuri Nakamura is the perennially shy, sexually passive Tomoko, who is effectively tricked into becoming a sex-worker. Besides the two main protagonists, the cast is fleshed out by a collection of auxiliary characters: an overweight compulsive masturbator, a sex-hungry older woman, anime-obsessed Koichi and the ghoulish, child-like Sayuri – whose closing chapter actually provides the film’s strongest moments…
Over the course of the film, one man is raped, a woman suffering from mental illness sleeps with her daughter, several people are beaten up, and many more are forced into demeaning sexual situations. On the other hand: two giant robots battle using their genitals, a loner has conversations with his giant green penis, and a pimp with a giant afro turns in the film’s most successful performance. The entire hour and a half running time is a mess of conflicting intentions and tones.
The source material and the stories told herein seem to provide the perfect platform to discuss social taboos and modern sexual practice, asking to take a tongue-in-cheek leer into the seedier side of Tokyo. However, as a film, it fails to succeed on nearly all fronts.
From the moment Lala Pipo opens, the colour palette arrests your attention. The bubblegum-blues and electric-pinks set the tone for the rest of the film. However, the glare from the screen long outstays its welcome, giving way to a visual design that is shallow and technically uneven in its execution. The framing and composition are uninspired; the special effects and treatment of the video image are noticeably low budget. The music is a dirge of J-pop ballads as forgettable as they are unsuitable.
Lala Pipo’s primary failing, however, is in its treatment of such sensitive subject matter. It fails utterly to balance humour and gravity, and instead ends up an offensive piece of work. All the female characters are painted as passive, sexual objects, whose only power comes from their ability to serve men. None are liberated, nor seem to exist outside of the sphere of male influence. Sexual violence and humiliation are difficult subjects for a comedy to even begin to wrestle with; and had Lala Pipo been a pure comedy it may, through sheer bravado been more palatable. What, in the end, makes the film offensive is this ill-fitting message of hope, presented in sentimental asides and voice-over. A suggestion that being ruthless in your aspirations, singular in your cruelty and, if female, submissive to the point of complete abandonment, that love can redeem. A wildly inappropriate moral line for a film this exploitative; so much so, that as an audience member you are reluctant to, even in the simple act of watching, to be complicit.
Is Lala Pipo so bad that it is good? No, although it certainly is the former. Is it so controversial that it is trailblazing? No, rather it is distinctly outdated. Is it successful as a comedy, or a compelling drama; does it manage to fuse the two? No.
Masayuki Miyano does manage, on occasion, to redeem this picture. There are a few genuine laughs to be had, and thanks to some assured editing, the film never really drags. Sayuri is grotesque enough to hold your attention during the film’s closing final chapters, and the DVD features a bizarre, but interesting little feature that asks the cast to elaborate on the word ‘sex’. It is telling that their answers, some of which are oddly poetic, are measurably more interesting and funny than the film’s own Stone Age take on the subject.
In the end, it is unfortunate that after Lala Pipo’s initially promising, sugary-sweet visuals have burned off your retina, you are left with a decidedly bad taste in your mouth.
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