Lala Pipo Review

Lala Pipo
In Tokyo's red light district six individuals try and make sense of their lives and choices.

by David Parkinson |
Published on
Release Date:

13 Nov 2009

Running Time:

120 minutes

Certificate:

Original Title:

Lala Pipo

Adapted from a novel by Hideo Okuda, this kinky movie interweaves vignettes about six lost souls in red-light Tokyo. Yet, for all the hyper-colourful imagery and stylised structure, this actually casts a melancholic verdict on the breakdown of communication and the devaluation of sex. Indeed, it’s less a study in exploitation than in isolation and the fact we occasionally do distasteful things for justifiable reasons.

If director Masayuki Miyano struggles to integrate Yoshiyuki Morishita’s phallic superhero fantasies, the storylines involving ageing nympho Mari Hamada, chubby porn star Tomoko Murakami and self-loathing writer Sarutobi Minagawa (complete with green Muppet penis) meld neatly.

Much of the source text is captured winningly here, but inevitably some elements have been disappointingly rendered.
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