Reviewed by Steve Sparshott
Stars Hiroki Narimiya, Tomoko Murakami, Tamaki Yuri Nakamura, Yoshimura, Sarutoki Minagawa, Mari Hamada
Written by Tetsuya Nakashima, based on the book
by Okuda Hideo
Certification UK 18
Runtime 93 minutes
Directed by Masayuki Miyano
Lala Pipo takes a cheeky look at Tokyo’s sex industry, its performers, hostesses, hustlers and consumers; a world in which porn DVDs are available from brightly-coloured street stalls and prostitution is known by the neat euphemism “compensated dating”. Using the reliable format of introducing a cast of disparate characters whose stories are bound to intersect at some point, the film has a lighthearted attitude to both its setting and its protagonists.
“Talent scout” Kenji (Narimiya) is an utterly fake smooth operator reminiscent of Jude Law’s Gigolo Joe (AI:Artificial Intelligence), who promises riches to potential hostesses/actresses/compensated daters. He’s given a little humanity by his frequent attempts to free a cute soft toy from a mechanical grab arcade machine; the toy could be a metaphor - perhaps Kenji just wants to find true love. The likeliest candidate is Tomoko (Nakamura), a supposedly innocent (but rather enthusiastic) newcomer to the game who follows Kenji’s suggestions and quickly ascends through a club’s levels (literally- the hostess floor, the hand job floor, the blow job floor…), eventually becoming a porn film star.
Kenji’s downstairs neighbour is Hiroshi (Minagawa), the archetypal overweight loser who eavesdrops through the ceiling and masturbates until even his penis - represented by a green Muppet similar to Kenji’s desired prize - objects. “No more whacking off,” it insists. “Get yourself a girlfriend.” Aspiring anime voice actress Sayuri (Murakami) is a chubby young woman who wears a disturbing frilly Bo Peep outfit to pick up men. This may be a Tokyo Goth-Loli fashion with which we’re not (yet) familiar in London; it certainly doesn’t seem to affect her scoring ability. Sayuri’s casual encounters are a rare thing in Lala Pipo - portraying sex as fun rather than degrading or profitable. Koichi (Yoshimura)’s existence at the janitorial end of the sex industry - he’s a cleaner in the club - has created a Taxi Driver-style paranoia; he sees filth everywhere, although he blames an insidious alien force for the spread of depravity. His response is slightly like Travis Bickle’s; he does indeed decide to take matters into his own hands, but in the guise of a rubbish Power Ranger with a large rectilinear phallus - a kind of ineffective Tetsuo: Iron Man.
Finally, quietly sex-obsessed fortysomething wife and mother Yoshie (Hamada) gets involved in the “mature lady” porn genre, with an appalled Kenji as her unwilling agent; although this new adventure contrasts with her painfully mundane home life, it doesn’t alter her melancholy demeanour one bit. It’s not a huge coincidence that these characters’ paths cross; after all, whether as players, managers or spectators, they’re in the same game. It’s to the film’s credit that the ways in which they interact aren’t always predictable, and there are a couple of neat twists - one rather effective, in which a character’s existence, and the power balance in her relationships, are revealed as something quite unexpected. The other tells the peculiarly macabre, sad backstory of one of the players - it’s actually quite tragic and moving and feels somewhat out of sync with the film’s generally light touch.
Lala Pipo’s jauntiness is reflected in its visuals. Daytime scenes convey summer heat with saturated colour, while Tokyo at night is a ready-made neon spectacle. The more fantastical elements, like Hiroshi’s talkative penis, Kenji’s candy dreamscapes (in which the arcade game’s claw lifts its occupants into a brighter future), and Koichi’s authentically trashy Power Ranger scenes, sit well with the overall look and feel. The soundtrack, a groovy 70s-style funkathon is similarly cheery, although it segues relentlessly from one track to the next like an iTunes playlist. Despite its theme, Lalapipo isn’t an explicit film. There’s almost no nudity, although there is a surprising amount of violence, some of it perpetrated by men against women, and the sex occasionally verges on rape. One of the character-led strands goes some way towards redressing the balance but the film has a generally misogynistic flavour.
Not that the any of the men are portrayed as anything other than creeps or losers, but they’re not victims of anything but their own shortcomings. In fact none of the characters is particularly sympathetic; generally they’re predators or victims without much depth. But Lala Pipo (the title is a corruption of an American’s observation that there are a “lotta people” in Tokyo) doesn’t judge, and while they may not be fleshed-out individuals, as a group they (and their story) are really rather engaging.