Here is a film which is hard to forget; not that you would want to. Millennium Actress is directed by Satoshi Kon, the director of Perfect Blue and Tokyo Godfathers. Here he gives us surrealistic storytelling using the plot device of a filmmaker shooting a documentary interviewing the subject character.

Chiyoko Fujiwara as a young girl falls in love with a stranger whose name she never even learns. Finding this stranger is a lifetime obsession which leads Chiyoko on an unlikely path to becoming a legendary film actress. Yes, in the confines of the film it does all make sense. It also hits many of the viewer’s emotional spots.

Kon not only directs, but also co-wrote the script. He chooses to make the filmmaker within the film, perhaps an extension of Kon himself, a part of Chiyoko’s story. We see the life of Chiyoko through his eyes as well as her’s. It’s an effective twist as the walls of time and reality are broken so to tell the story.

Give Millennium Actress a look, if you haven’t already. Watch it again if you have already seen it once.