The Perks of Being a Wallflower

The movie starts with some cast showcasing a doll’s house set and a voiceover of a girl explaining how women tend to expect themselves to look nice. A set is displayed showing the multi faceted aspect of what beauty means. The clip transitions towards Asako, her mother is scolding her on call for applying countless cosmetics. Asako starts crying and explaining how she is not fine with merely looking pretty but who wishes that she looks extraordinary, The Perks of Being a Wallflower when very frustrated she starts believing that even people on the streets are constantly scrutinizing her for having a pimple.

In the next episode, she is shown in her classroom but rather focusing on her work, she is looking for a phone that does plastic surgeries. But when at that point the teacher says the famous words by the Brillat-Savarin, a French gourmet “You are what you eat”, something significant changes in her. It is even more interesting that such thinking leads her down into believing that she is eating pretty things; so if she eats pretty things she can be pretty too. To some extent she appears to be satisfied with how she looks. Three years later, in the same class, they meet Yu Amatsuka, a mesmerizing and beautiful girl and everyone, including Asako can’t help gaping at her breathtaking beauty. The two hit it off right away, yet she also inadvertently starts modifying Asako’s perception of the world which is quite grappling at prettiness.

Sena Ryo brings to our attention a movie that revolves around lookism which, although the society appears to be moving in several dimensions, is still quite a phenomenon to this very day. As for the driving force of the show business, it can actually be summed up into the constant strive for beauty and increasing smoothness, and for Sena most especially in her movie, the 2 mentioned came out first.

Simultaneously, she realizes that zealousness with which Asako simultaneously approaches ‘kawaii’ begins to be treated with extreme sociopathic tendencies, thus suggesting that it is Asako who suffers from it most vividly as her understanding of reality is utterly irrational as the idea that eating cute food will make you pretty has her only eating candy emphasizes that. Aside from her psychological aspect, that she essentially risks destroying her body health adds more to this comment. This is how Senna explicates the issue, viewing it as more than a psychological concern: it is a contemporary social challenge, and a challenge that is further compounded by the absence of (good) parental supervision adolescents experience, which appears to be a rather serious matter in Japan, at least judging by the cinematic portrayal of the nation where parents profoundly lack.

At the same time, however, and particularly closer to the finale and with the help of Yu, Senna also expresses a more optimistic dimension of lookism whereby appreciating beauty and wishing to be beautiful and liking beautiful and cute things is part of being human and can inspire or motivate many good ideas and the like. What is contained in this critique is first and foremost an issue of addiction and what it entails.

Known for their emotional projects, Daring Formats has now teamed up with Beijing Breathing Cinema to produce a work that amazingly begins with a lecture on Dostoevsky. We see Ikeda Akana in the role of Asako, who is much oriented towards romance. On the other hand, Yu’s character is remarkably played by Aki Suda and her opposite in the film, making the chemistry between the two girls in the lunch scene satisfyingly good.

The quality of cinematography mixes well with the music which heightens the actors’ performance with some short bursts of horror. Asako’s thoughts are sometimes brutally mirrored within the characters, heightening the cinematography even further. All of this features great editing, contributing to a fast storytelling pace.

For a film tackling the issues of lookism as opposed to the standard ideals of beauty, this film is surprisingly on point, speaking in terms of production quality as well. However, considering the level of depth that two girls bring into the project with their performances, with Yu’s actions at points feeling a bit overshadowed or disconnected, ‘What you eat’ definitely leaves an impression.

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