Seijun Suzuki, 2006, Japan, 111 mins
Cast: Zhang Ziyi, Joe Odagiri, Mikijiro Hira
Review by Mike Bartlett
In the latest issue of Sight and Sound, Tony Rayns recalls how cult director Seijun Suzuki once claimed his stablemate at Nikkatsu Studios, Shohei Imamura, was incapable of making the ‘program pictures’ that Suzuki churned out in the ‘60s to support his colleague’s ‘art films’. It’s for these quota quickies that Suzuki has become immortalised – fast and furious gangster pics with a dash of post-modern pop culture and off-kilter imagery. But the question remains – is Suzuki capable of making those ‘art films’ himself?
An answer of sorts may lie in his latest offering, Princess Raccoon, a gaudily-coloured musical whose non-stop effervescence belies the fact that its maker is in his early eighties. The story, such as it is, concerns a young prince exiled by his father to a magic mountain where he meets and falls in love with a princess who’s also a raccoon. Or something. It’s nothing so much as a crazy reworking of Romeo and Juliet’s star-cross’d lovers, except that the sensibility behind it is even more bewildering than the story. Imagine Japanese folklore treated with the self-conscious artificiality of Kwaidan or An Actor’s Revenge as directed by Fellini trying to make Eric Rohmer’s Perceval Le Gallois. With songs.
The visual bombardment is relentless – oh, yes, this is one of those films where critics will be reaching for the words “dazzling” and “invention”. But avoid such films; after all, if you’re dazzled, then you’re not seeing clearly. And believe me, 20 minutes of this and your vision will be blurring with the greatest headache this side of your 18t h birthday. I’ve never seen so many critics fall asleep or race to the toilet as they did in the screening I attended. Yet will there be bad reviews? I can’t help feeling that Suzuki’s cult reputation is so strong, few would dare speak out against it…
And after all, this is fun, isn’t it? It’s your art, mister, with a reassuring dash of silliness. No Angelopoulos solemnity here – there’s music and colour, Japanese rapping and song-and-dance numbers. It’s part of that new breed of kitsch art – see Thai Westerns, see Kung Fu comedy – that lets the cinephile off the hook by giving them the illusion of sharing in another culture while simultaneously switching their brains off. And didn’t Kitano do all this in one scene – the tap dance finale to Zatoichi – while also crafting a haunting and exciting Samurai drama at the same time?
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