MovieChat Forums > Pâfekuto burû (1999) Discussion > For those who after watching it couldn't...

For those who after watching it couldn't figure it out:

posted 11 years ago by Manuel-Hoerth
5 replies | jump to latest

I am still struggling a bit with understanding what's going on, so as to become clear about what we actually see in the movie I will write it down for you and for me:

(Spoilers galore)

So here are the facts (the stuff i am pretty sure I got right)

The movie scenes give the most important clues about what's going on - it's our only window to reality, therefore I have been able to deduce the following:

1. Our heroines (protagonist) name is Yoko Takakura - it's NOT Mima Kirigoe nor is it Rumi Hidaka

2. Most of what we see in the movie are Yoko Takakura's delusions. With the movie scenes being pretty much the only exceptions.

As is hinted at in the movie scenes, Yoko Takakura was raped in a strip club.
Afterwards she went crazy and in a string of events killed several people probably including the people who raped her as well as probably her sister who is a top model.
She couldn't deal with all those traumatic experiences so she developed multiple personality disorder, convincing herself that she herself is her sister the top model.
In reality however she is fat and lives in an psychiatric hospital. She seems to be afraid of some security guards since they probably had to forcibly restrain her. So in her delusions the murders that she committed where committed by one of the security guards who in her delusion is a crazed stalker of her top model persona. In her delusion, her real life including her rape as well as her talks with her doctor in the psychiatric hospital are merely a movie role she is playing - thus she can escape her sad reality and her guilty conscience.

She actually has several layers of "protection" (from her traumatic past). Meaning she has multiple personalities. Mima Kirigoe is one of them and another one of her personalities is Rumi Hidaka (both of whom are based on real people she knows). Her original personality of Yoko Takakura no longer exists in her head.

So when someone where to confront her with her being fat and ugly or her having been raped, she can "protect" herself from that sad reality by claiming that she is the beautiful top model Mima Kirigoe and that her being raped was merely a movie. If that someone where then to further confront her saying that all of this was a delusion of her and she is not the real Mima Kirigoe, she would claim that her imaginary stalker invented a fake Mima while she is the real one, or she could even switch identities completely and become her third personality Rumi Hidaka, like she does at the end when she is asked who she is and she claims to be Rumi Hidaka.

Rumi Hidaka is obviously partly inspired by herself, as she has her appearance (fat and ugly) and in her fantasy Rumi Hidaka takes on the personality of Mima (like she originally did in her fantasy). However by doing so, she actually buries her true real self even further until Yoko Takakura is completely gone.

So that much is clear.

The only thing I am not clear about, is who is the REAL Mima Kirigoe?
Is Mima Kirigoe her sister? That would make sense.
But she killed her sister in order to take over her identity. So that can't be because then who is the Mima Kirigoe at the very end visiting the hospital?

Or maybe what we see at the end is not the reality (which would make sense, since so far everything we saw in Perfect Blue was Yoko Takakura's delusion).

But I don't think so, because she is addressing the audience directly assuring us "I am real". Also she appears very confident when she says that and also tells the nurse that without Yoko she wouldn't be who she is today.

In an Interview (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dsVqAq-guhc) the director says that the message of the film is that after going through what is real and what is not one feels confused and like one is losing it. But that after going back and forth between what's real and what's not one eventually finds ones own identity through ones own powers and find the place one truly belongs and that no one can help you do this but you yourself.

So I guess that's what the end scene is about.

Everyone experiences tough times in life. And there are two ways to deal with the insanities of life. One is by avoiding the painful realities of life. The other is by facing them, learning from them, becoming confident through them.

So maybe in that sense Yoko and the 'real' and confident Mima at the end are really the same person having had the same experiences and the same past. The only difference is that Mima learns from bad experiences and becomes more confident when faced with more adversity, where as Yoko wants to bury her past and becomes less confident when faced with adversity.

And I think that's what the movie is really about.

[–] showa48 11 years ago

Hmm, darn. I just watched it - and now you made me want to rewatch it - with YOUR interpretation in mind;-)

I didnt' really pay attention to the (short) Yoko passage, except as another one of Rumi's personalities (ie. taking it as just another hint that she's seriously ill).

Although the going standard interpretation is that it is all Rumi's schemings/murders, aiding Mima's delusions along, several scenes go against this:
1. Mima seeing Rumi jump along the lightpoles; clearly impossible (even if Rumi was thinner..). Ie. could be part of Yoko's delusion.
2. Rumi's uneasiness at the rape scene. Very unlikely that a professional agent of actors and singers would have such a reaction. Could be Yoko's own memories of the rape surfacing.

There is nothing inside - and they rebuild it every 20th year.

[–] inanytime 11 years ago

+1. I like your explanation of the plot. Thanks for taking the time to write it down.

[–] DvS79 10 years ago

Time ago I watched it.
Your summary is interesting, actually that helped me understand the symbolic end (I thought this was just a puke Happy End). But I think you're complicating all much, giving too much symbolism.
I'll explain how I think is the (real) movie, maybe I'm wrong.

The movie (Double Bind) isn't a symbolism, is a multipurpose narrative device, for the moment when the real movie (Perfect Blue) enter to the hard phase of psychological thriller:
1) The movie gives us clue about what is going on (or what we are supposed to believe is happening) in the mind and reality of Mima Kirigoe, using direct dialogues from the script.
2) The back and forth between reality-movie-hallucinations shows how Mima is living her confusion about "what is the reality" and also helps us feel the same confusion.
3) The movie is very important in the way to the "Mima's insanity". In the movie, her character -Yoko Takakura- has the same features insane murderers that (supposedly) Mima Kirigoe is suffering in her real life, at the same time Mima is being drugged by Rumi who make food to her in her home. Mima is a living dead, she only can be "sober" to play her insane-murderer character (Yoko) in the set, while the rest she is confused about: whether what happened in the movie was real, or what truly happened was hallucination; whether she is Mima Kirigoe madden with a imaginary "Ghost-Mima" of her past, or she is a "Yoko Mima" (impostor/insane) killing everyone and "The Real Mima" is (the real/or the left of her sanity).
Mima was never really insane; but the stress, sadness and external agents were beating her.

Before enter the phase of psychological thriller was the context, which is a representation of our evolution in the life due to changes and new decisions; evolution which never is an easy road and sometimes quite struggled and depressing, what makes our reality exceed us, and our reactions aren't the best due our immaturity and really not understanding our own reality.
The context is also a naked review about how "The Industry" uses, perverts and discards people; how "push careers" and make "adult star" following a stereotyped moves until the toy gone bad (and is replaced). Even it's prophetic compared with the typical story of many Disney girls & like.

Of course here is the creation of the characters:
1) Mima Kirigoe:
1.1) Mima is a girl whose dream is to be a singer with her friends, but one day due to the offer of a faster rise she chooses and betrays her dreams, her friends, her audience, even herself and her dignity.
1.2) She is unhappy doing that turning point in her career; but (because of the offer and due not fail to her Team) she convinces herself that "it's what she wants".
1.3) Unfortunately the situations only goes from bad to worse and the result she get is just the opposite of what she expected and she is falling ever more (even her friends are now successful and most famous -and grow up-); whereas now she is dissociated so she self convinces that "everything is going well" and "is happening what she want", justifying everything in interviews, devaluating negative reviews, and happy reaffirming her way with more "hardcore turning point".
2) The Real Mima:
2.1) In parallel, there is the "Mima's Room" website, where someone is supplanting her identity. That someone seems watch her all the time because knows every move and tastes of her; but even it's fun to Mima.
2.2) That will change when the "new career" of Mima Kirigoe begins because this supplanter -"The Real Mima"- no longer speaks just about her routine, but about the Mima's truly feels and thoughts at that time. No one else could know what Mima think and feel, except Mima, and ironically Mima Kirigoe at that time is self lying pretending loves her new way. Who is "The Real Mima"?.
2.3) But when the career&image of Mima sinks deeper and Mima reaffirms in actions and interviews that "all is going well for her", "The Real Mima" warns that she has been replaced by an imposter who is dirtying her image and making a fool with her name.

Symbolically, as you say, both characters are a representation of "the two ways" to deal with the harshness of life.
1) Rumi Hidaka plays "The Real Mima", is the option to reject the present linving in the past, even isolating in it believing that everything is still as before where everything was right and the present is a "lie".
2) Mima Kirigoe is the option to reject the present clinging stubbornly to the errors, facing the problems denying it, defending her choices viewing "mistakes" as "successes", and she has "never been wrong" and "the critiques are just haters", isolating in a comfortable "reality".
Really there were no more options?.

Then the psychological thriller begins and both characters collide in the way you know.
It ends with the villain unmasked and locked, and the heroin redeemed and healed. Seemingly a simple happy ending.

The symbolic end would be that Mima Kirigoe now is "the third option", the final real option, of removing the self-delusion blindfold that cause she denies her present errors and look in her "past image" to remember who she was and what she wanted; to change her present and overcome -really- her conflicts of past&present, growing up. It is the option to recognize what things she was unhappy, what she wanted to regain and what things were false solutions.

So Mima Kirigoe thanks to "The Real Mima" because (somehow) due to her Mima is who she is now (again) "I'm the Real Mima".
Maybe she is singer again, even maybe she is still actress, or maybe she is both, but she has beaten her demons, she isn't betraying herself, and she is happy and successful.

[–] DvS79 10 years ago

The character Rumi Hidaka is pretty interesting too.
Although she is very important we know very little about her. We don't know if she was always crazy, or if she went crazy with the turning point and sinking in the Mima's career.
In the end seems clear that she has MPD, but at the beginning we don't known with certainty. At the beginning (forgetting that she seemed innocent) we can attributed to her that she projected her personal dreams in Mima.
She always administered the "Mima's Room" website, but she is her manager/promoter so that's not entirely crazy. Today we know that it is very normal that the star's Team have and administer websites & social networking accounts, and the stars don't ever use it and may not even know exists.

But this character can have some more meaning into our reality.
Is unusual we encounter with crazy people, but more often we encounter and connected with emotional vampires, toxic friends and even psychopaths. Isn't unusual that (in those difficult moments of a person) is very close a person of this kind doing "his/her job": creating confusion, fear, depression, more failures in the life of his/her victim and pushing him/her into the ravine. Maybe even they were the initial cause of the problems.
Ironically these persons often manages to go unnoticed, being "best" friends/couples and stay very close, having influence, being a "support", and sometimes become indispensable/necessary/addictive for the victim (especially in the case of psychopaths).
These people often have a talent for understanding his/her victims as much or more than themselves.

[–] heynow123 10 years ago

Thanks for posting the explanation, Manuel-Hoerth. I had no idea, I was taking it all at face value. I almost feel the need to rewatch it now and up my rating, but...... I think I'll watch something else instead. lol