Millennium Actress (2001)

Millennium Actress is a 2001 anime feature film co-written and directed by Satoshi Kon. His first feature film, the superb Perfect Blue (1997), had been a surprise hit and received widespread critical acclaim. Millennium Actress was the first feature that was Kon’s own project right from the start and on which he acted as both writer and director. Millennium Actress, like Perfect Blue, deals with the blurring of the line between fantasy and reality.

Millennium Actress was greeted with enthusiasm by critics and is now established as one of the great anime feature films.

This is a movie that you have to stick with. At first it seems fairly straightforward but it becomes steadily more complex and more fascinating.

It begins with the demolition of a movie studio, the studio at which the famous actress Chiyoko Fujiwara had made all of her films. Chiyoko is now in her 70s and retired and lives in seclusion. Somehow documentary filmmaker and Chiyoko Fujiwara  superfan Genya Tachibana has persuaded her to be interviewed on camera. He arrives at her house with his cameraman in tow.

As Chiyoko reminisces about her life and career Tachibana and his cameraman find themselves inside her memories, filming her life as it happens. But is Chiyoko remembering her life or her films? Are the two indistinguishable to her? It appears that Tachibana and his cameraman are inside her films as well as her memories. In fact Tachibana becomes several characters in her movies.

The central obsession of Chiyoko’s life is her attempt to be reunited with a man she only ever met once, briefly. She spends years trying to find him. Or maybe that happened in one of her movies? It is impossible to separate her memories from her movies. The pursuit of a mysterious man seemed to be the plot of all her movies!

The man is a political dissident but politics plays zero part in this movie. The man is a young girl’s romantic fantasy - a handsome dashing rebel. He’s a rebel in the 1940s but he’s a rebel in lots of other eras as well.  

Does the man exist? He does exist for Chiyoko. Maybe he’s real if she believes he’s real. And of course he could be real.

There’s also the curse, and the key. And the man who hunts Chiyoko’s man across the centuries. We know the key is real. We’ve seen it. Her mystery man gave it to her for safekeeping. It unlocks the most important thing in the world. When she finds him again he will tell her what that is.

You can’t assume that Chiyoko’s whole story is a fantasy. There’s reality and there’s movies and they intersect or co-exist or exist simultaneously. Maybe reality creates movies or maybe movies create their own reality.


And there’s the role played by an older actress Eiko, who right from the start saw Chiyoko as a rival.

It might all sound a bit cerebral but this is also a movie about overwhelming emotions. This is a movie about love.

And it’s a movie about having a quest. About being willing to do anything, dare anything, risk anything, to find the one you love. It doesn’t matter if it takes decades. 

It’s also a movie about movies. It’s a love letter to cinema.

Millennium Actress was made using old school cel animation techniques and it looks great.

Finding a satisfying ending is always a challenge in this sort of movie but Kon pulls it off superbly. Millennium Actress is very offbeat but it’s a fascinating moving magical movie. Very highly recommended.

The Shout! Factory Blu-Ray looks great and the extras include interviews with the producers.

I’ve also reviewed Perfect Blue (1997).