PRIDE (Japan, 2009)
Directed by: Shusuke Kaneko
Starring: Stephanie, Hikari Mitsushima

Based on an award-winning manga about aspiring opera singers kneecapping each other backstage, PRIDE is like the Tonya Harding/Nancy Kerrigan story only with opera singing instead of ice skating and prettier dresses. Shio (Stephanie) is a rich, refined little princess who is about to leave the pampered environs of her singing school and go to Italy to further her training when her father suddenly – whoops! – loses the family fortune and goes bankrupt. Moe is a scrappy girl from the wrong side of the tracks who’s saddled with two liabilities: she goes to a bum opera school (“Senju. Not the best,” one character sniffs) and her mother is 500 horsepower gin disposal unit. Shio and Moe are thrown together in a competition and while you’d expect the cool, imperious Shio to roll over clumsy, obsequious Moe, it turns out Moe has an advantage: she’ll do anything to win. “Have you no pride?” Shio screams at her. “I threw it away,” Moe purrs. “It was of no use to me.” 

Yukari Ichijo’s shojo manga, Pride, has been adapted by Shusuke Kaneko (DEATH NOTE) and it’s catfight heaven. Wrapped in sorbet-colored dresses and gliding through 80’s chic rooms full of swagged curtains, five ton chandeliers and white columns these two li’l divas go at it like full-grown killers. Hikari Mitsushima (LOVE EXPOSURE) is a pop-singer-turned-actress and she plays Moe as a flip-flopper: one minute she’s out for blood, the next she’s collapsing in lower class shame. Stephanie, who won a “New Artist” award after her singing debut in 2007, plays Shio as a tower of high class dignity forced to get her hands dirty now that daddy’s money is gone.

PRIDE speaks the language of shojo manga with falling rose petals indicating ruined dreams and musical sequences that border on camp, but never quite cross the line. These two girls dish out the nasty, but a belt across the face is nothing compared to their poisonous words.  Full of tantrums, sabotage, alcoholic breakdowns, arranged marriages, cross-dressing and a fabulous scene where Moe tries to kill her mother in the office of a music industry exec, this film has no pride, either, which is exactly what you want from a flick about opera divas who are truly, madly, deeply in hate with each other.