Love & Pop
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AUSTRALIAN PREMIERE OF THE NEW 2K RESTORATION PRESENTED BY TEST PATTERN
Overview
We’re honoured to present the Australian premiere of the new restoration of Love & Pop, a bittersweet slice of Y2K adolescent life from Neon Genesis Evangelion creator Hideaki Anno. After getting their hands on a cellphone intended to collect contacts for a dating service, Tokyo schoolgirl Hiromi (Asumi Miwa) and her friends Nao, Chieko and Chisa (Hirono Kudō, Yukie Nakama and Kirari) instead use it to arrange compensated dates with older men. When a certain topaz ring catches her eye, Hiromi challenges herself to make enough dough to buy it before the shop closes.
Love & Pop will be introduced by Angus Truskett of Test Pattern on Thursday 2 April only.
Why See This Film
Hideaki Anno uniquely adapts Ryū Murakami’s novel Topaz II by shooting entirely with MiniDV cameras (the first Japanese film produced totally digitally), employing the kind of expressionism, precision and intimacy echoed in his animated work with the grittier edge of reality—truly a visual feat to behold. Through fisheyes, model train tracks and dizzying collages set to classical music, we witness these girls test the waters of adulthood in a bustling metropolis beset by the ennui and social turmoil of Japan’s lost decade. Utterly transfixing and quietly devastating, Love & Pop captures the fleeting excitement of youth and its exploitation by a cruel new world.
Audience note: contains depictions of sexual violence.
PRESENTED BY TEST PATTERN
Test Pattern is a new film club by Angus Truskett, dedicated to cult, under-appreciated, and subversive movies. Less of a screening, more of an experience - a celebration of the gonzo, the low-brow, and the gloriously unhinged. Think the glow of SBS after 10pm, or paying some guy online to send you a bootleg DVD-R of a long-lost grail. Cinema for people who like things a little different.
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