Paprika

Starring: Megumi Hayshibera, Toru Emori, Katsunosuke Hori, Toru Furuya

Written by: Satoshi Kon, Based on the story by Yasutaka Tsutsui

Directed by: Satoshi Kon

Distributor: Sony Pictures Classics

Rated: R

World cinema continues to cast its strange, ethereal light on the nature of human dreaming with Satoshi Kon’s Paprika. Based on a story by accomplished author Yasutaka Tsutsui, Paprika is a complex 90 minutes of reality-twisting visual phenomena. The story follows Dr. Atsuko Chiba – a conservative clinical psychologist who helps clients by entering their dreamscapes as a character named Paprika, a younger, more cheerful version of the adult Dr. Chiba. Aided by a rare, tiny iPod-like device called a DC-MINI, she opens up their repressed memories. When one of the precious devices goes missing, reality turns bizarre as the dream world begins to make incursions into the waking world.

Kon fluidly plays with the all too permeable membrane between dream and reality in inspired cinematic style, using so many visual tricks to such dazzling effect that it’s surprising Paprika has a coherent plot. More than once, a mirror is cast directly on the concept of cinema. At one point, a tough as nails cop discusses his dreams with Paprika in a movie theatre. Later, while attempting to save the life of the title character, the cop presses himself through the screen of the same theatre as it plays a film called Paprika. Both intended and serendipitous, these little dream warping gimmicks make the act of leaving the movie theatre at film’s end a reality-altering experience. It’s so rare that cinema has that effect, and it’s always a pleasure when it happens.

Paprika is a refreshing addition to the growing list of contemporary dream films. Last year’s The Science of Sleep, with all its rough edges, made the dream world look hastily sketched into the subconscious. 2005’s Mirrormask was a lot prettier, but it focused so much on the fantastic that its world of dream seemed disconnected from reality. Kon’s blending of the ordinary with the extraordinary in a sleek anime package makes it the most aesthetically appealing of the genre to date. Throughout, dreams collide in a tremendous, ominously cool parade into oblivion. A frog marching band plays as a vast group of figurines, statues, medical mannequins, eastern religious icons, appliances and more follow. Look closely and you might spot Waldo or Sgt. Pepper. Somewhere at the center of it all is Paprika herself – a subtly attractive girl who wouldn’t even stand out in a crowd on the poster of a movie named after her. It helps, of course, that Paprika’s theme is an irrepressibly glossy tune by Japanese techno-pop master Susumu Hirasawa. Some of Hirasawa’s best bits include the theme for the parade and the end titles, which are well worth sitting though. From opening to the final credit, this is delirious, dizzying anime fun. VS