As a genre, anime has always seemed mired in perpetual adolescence. Of course, it’s always dangerous to make sweeping judgments about international cinema, since it’s entirely possible that the tiny percentage of films that make their way into U.S. theatrical release, or even to various major festivals, are in no way representative of what’s actually going in Japan (or Turkey or Mexico or Iceland). Still, with the notable exception of Hayao Miyazaki (Spirited Away, Howl’s Moving Castle) and some of his cohorts over at Studio Ghibli, I’m hard-pressed to think of many Japanese animated features that don’t involve spunky and/or busty teens, all with eyes roughly the size of normal people’s ears, doing gory battle with tentacled monsters, killer robots and sometimes even tentacled killer monster robots. Paprika, the latest mind-bender from well-regarded director Satoshi Kon (Perfect Blue, Millennium Actress), doesn’t exactly deviate from this bedroom-nerd formula, but it does manage to invest it with more philosophical intrigue and sheer visual nuttiness than any film of its kind I’ve ever seen.
How Kon achieves this is breathtakingly simple: He creates a context in which logic and coherence have not just no place, but no merit. Remember Dreamscape, the cheesy ’80s flick in which Dennis Quaid went rummaging around in various people’s nightmares? Same basic idea here, except that in lieu of Quaid we have a severe-looking (but still cartoon-hot) psychiatrist, Dr. Atsuko Chiba (voice of Megumi Hayashibara), who’s recently begun analyzing her patients’ dreams via the use of a new device called—in English for some reason—the DC-Mini. Of course, it wouldn’t do for some boring old doctor in a lab coat to enter such a surreal landscape, so the DC-Mini allows each user to select a dream avatar more in keeping with traditional anime physiognomy. When inside others’ heads, therefore, Dr. Chiba becomes spunky, busty, red-headed, saucer-eyed Paprika (also Hayashibara, but breathier)—a more proactive version of the doctor who gradually begins to develop her own separate identity. Which is a good thing, since no amount of sober analysis is likely to halt the psychotic collective nightmare that now threatens to merge with and subsume the waking world.
None of this makes a whole lot of sense, but it does give Kon license to serve up pretty much anything he thinks might tickle us, astound us, or just plain creep us out. One of Dr. Chiba’s patients, a guilt-ridden homicide detective (Akio Ohtsuka), endures a recurring spectacular fantasy that amounts to a theme-park ride through various iconic movie genres: film noir, jungle adventure, etc. What amazes isn’t so much the details of each milieu, though all of them are vividly conceived—it’s more the fluid yet disorienting way that each new “scene” almost imperceptibly arises from a sudden shift of perspective or orientation, which precisely mimics the way that dreams (or at least my dreams) actually progress. And the runaway killer nightmare—which turns out to be a megalomaniac’s diabolical plot to take over the world, or at least reshape it in his own image, bwahahahaha—is an unforgettable lunatic parade of grimacing dolls and trumpet-playing frogs, samurai warriors and household appliances. As this seething horde merrily oompahs down the street, its numbers growing each time it’s revisited during the film, it really does look like your frazzled unconscious sometimes feels.
Paprika works overtime to posit movies as waking dreams, and even tosses in the Internet to boot, via a mysterious website-cum-bar that the homicide detective enters. (Its two perpetually smiling, Laurel-and-Hardy bartenders are the movie’s best running joke.) That’s hardly an original idea, but it’s nonetheless bracing to see it made so crazily, giddily manifest. Kon doesn’t shy away from graphic and disturbing imagery—this cartoon is definitely not for kids—and if he indulges various anime clichés, at least he’s doing so with a clear and defensible purpose. It’s a lot less wearisome watching some lithe kewpie doll save the universe when she’s the fantasy projection of a woman who’s spent her life comparing herself to other such impossible heroines, rather than just the lurid lust object of a bunch of arrested adolescents at drawing boards and computers.
Paprika
3 1/2
Voices of Megumi Hayashibara, Tôru Furuya, Kôichi Yamadera
Directed by Satoshi Kon
Rated R
Opens Friday