LOVE AND LOATHING AND LULU AND AYANO (Japan, 2010)
Directed by: Hisayasu Sato
Starring: Norie Yasui, Mayu Sakuma, Minoru Torihada, Ryonosuke Kawai, Aya Kiguchi, Hirofumi Arai, Ini Kusano, Makiko Watanabe

Based on a non-fiction collection of interviews with day-player porn actresses, LALALAA is a tweaked out, anime-esque trip down the porno rabbithole where the worst thing you can do isn’t a gangbang video, it’s to be unprofessional. Junko, a 22 year-old nobody is an office girl well on her way to being an office lady for the rest of her life. But then she’s liberated by a sleazeball. In most Japanese movies, the scene in which the innocent young thing gets scouted by an adult video casting pimp on the streets of Shibuya is portrayed as an evil seduction to the dark side. But here, it’s Junko’s liberation. At her first porn shoot, she’s terrified until she dons a blue wig, calls herself Lulu and starts acting like a crazy otaku kid. Her popularity sky rockets and she starts developing an entire split personality: in the office she’s the locked-down Junko, terrorized by her domineering mother. But in adult videos she’s the popular, free-spirited otaku sex star, Lulu.

But she barely has time to revel in her new double life before trouble rears its twin heads. First up, it’s Ayano, a porn veteran with an anger management problem who regards Lulu as  deeply annoying competition who must be destroyed. Then there’s a fan (Ini Kusano) who begins stalking her, sweetly at first but with growing creepiness. With Lulu’s double identity about to be revealed at her corporate workplace, a stalker fan getting closer and the increasingly rage-fueled Ayano lurking in the background, things get complicated quickly. This movie is a suprisingly matter-of-fact, non-erotic look at the bottom rungs of the adult film industry in Japan anchored by two live wire performances by first timer Norie Yasui as Lulu and with Mayu Sakuma as Ayano. Free of prurience and perviness, this is a frank, clear-eyed view of how our jobs take a toll on our lives, whether they’re jobs that require us to wear clothes or not.