`Perfect Blue' Offers Dark Side Of Fame

Movie review XX 1/2 "Perfect Blue," feature-length Japanese anime film directed by Satoshi Kon, from a script by Sadayuki Murai. 80 minutes. Dubbed in English. Varsity, today through Thursday. Not rated; includes graphic depictions of rape and murder.

When pop singers attempt to cross over into the acting world, the results are usually disastrous. But is that the reason the public rejects their acting personas? Isn't it also because the public can't accept a singer's altered identity?

"Perfect Blue," a Japanese anime film, explores the dangers of switching identities on the public when a pop idol leaves music to pursue an acting career. It's a surprisingly un-supernatural topic for anime, which usually features big robots, pretty girls and other sci-fi-ish stuff. But this film still manages to twist reality, just in a more subtle - and dark - fashion. Call it cartoon noir.

Adopted from the novel "Perfect Blue" by Yoshikazu Takeuchi, The movie begins sunny and bright, when Mima Kirigoe announces at her final performance that she's leaving her Spice Girls-like pop trio to become an actress. Mima starts out as the classic pretty young girl of anime films, with her big eyes, heart-shaped face and girlish figure. From there, the animation gradually darkens to a gray, black and rainy backdrop and Mima gets more and more ragged.

At first, Mima can only get walk-on parts in a TV movie miniseries. As her role grows, though, she's asked to do more risque scenes - including a gang rape scene - which completely divorces her from her former sugary sweet image. Then she discovers a Web site about her that describes intimate details that only a stalker could know. Mima's identity begins to unravel, in the public eye and in her own mind. The people around her become victims of heinous killings.

Like her psychologically deranged TV character, Mima slowly starts to break down from the stress of her life and the constant fear of her stalker. She hallucinates conversations with her former pop self and has trouble differentiating between dreams and real life, between her character and herself.

The jumps between altered realities leave the viewer as confused as Mima. Her stalker is terrifying, even as a cartoon, with a deathly white pallor, pupil-less gray eyes, bad teeth and bony face.

What's most disturbing about "Perfect Blue" is the graphic violence, a common characteristic of many anime films. The murder scenes are grisly, and Mima's rape scene, although just a cartoon version of a television taping, is extremely unsettling.

The story line is not much more creative than your average suspense thriller, but "Perfect Blue" does break new ground as an anime film and it offers a dark examination of fame. It's what would happen if Britney Spears went to hell.