This movie was delightful, like a Japanese Amelie. Momoko (Kyoko Fukada) is a high school girl obsessed with the Rococo period. She loves Lolita fashions, the frillier the better, and has no problems traveling all the way to Tokyo from her rural town to visit Baby, the Stars Shine Bright, her favorite shop. But a girl needs money if she's going to wear couture, so Momoko starts selling her father's old Versace knock-offs online. She is contacted by Ichiko (Anna Tsuchiya), a biker girl, and the two become unlikely friends. But when Momoko is contacted by the owner of Baby, the Stars Shine Bright (Yoshinori Okada) with a job offer the same day Ichiko is challenged to a beat-down by her gang, which will she choose?
Momoko is a completely disaffected, almost amoral, character which only makes her more entertaining. She is given to flights of fantasy in which she can fly and she gets bored when other people talk, so she illustrates their stories with cartoons. This makes for several surreal but charming interludes.
The actress, Kyoko Fukada, looks like Emily Browning to me, especially with the blond hair and the bangs. Anna Tsuchiya is a beautiful girl under all the makeup and has an incredibly distinctive voice. I don't watch enough contemporary Japanese movies to know more about them than that, so that's what I'm going with. This is a fun, cute, girly little movie that should be enjoyed by more people.
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