I gotta give one great big shout for the fabulous (in all senses) Kamikaze Girls: the pop-culture-saturated story of an improbable friendship between Momoko (Kyoko Fukada), a young woman striving like Wilde toward a “rococo” way of being in frilly Lolita-inspired dresses, and Ichigo/Ichiko (Anna Tsuchiya), a young woman striving to be a Wild One via a tough-grrl Yanki way of being.
The movie is a joy to watch, moving through flashbacks and fantasy sequences of exuberant playfulness, even presenting one sequence in cartoons (to keep “you kids” attentive, Momoko tells the camera). It’s one big sugary/drug-rush of a film, but not–for all that–simplistic or stupid; it avoids all the expected cliches (especially the seemingly-inevitable breakdown of female friendship into hetero courtship). And best of all it revels in the intelligence and agency of its protagonists–not suckered into prefab style but slyly finding in the trash of consumer culture means to make something of their own. But blah blah: it’s just a blast.