“It’s showtime!”
Imagine if the Cirque du Soleil put on a production of Freud’s psychoanalysis of dreams and you’re halfway towards getting your mind around the lavish sci-fi anime Paprika. Grand, weird, aloof, and always just out of the reach of comprehension, it’s a dazzling showcase of animated prowess with the faint outline of a message lost in a world of its own. Revolving around the quirky creators of the ‘DC Mini’, a device which allows the wearer to control and inhabit the dreams of others, the plot feels far more like an excuse for a visual tour-de-force than any of its thematic inspirations (rumour has it that the film strongly influenced Christopher Nolan’s Inception). Caught in the rush to rescue a stolen DC Mini before it can wreak havoc is the titular character, an unflappably cheerful young lady who appears in the dreams of others, guardian-angel-like, when she is needed – easily the coolest psychotherapist ever put on screen. Her personality, however, remains an enigma: is she a playful heroine? A cipher? A terrorist? Or the part of ourselves which we cannot control, our underlying nature to which we are always true, made flesh? As the final major feature film from the legendary anime director Satoshi Kon (Paranoia Agent, Perfect Blue), one also can’t help but view Paprika as a love letter to the medium of cinema and its ability to transform the ordinary into something both more outlandish and more true than reality (particularly since one of its central sub-plots concerns a jaded detective learning to reawaken his taste buds to the wonder of films). Imagination, it would seem, is Kon’s greatest and most enduring legacy: the spice of life, if you will.
tinyflix 