Movie Review: PRINCESS RACCOON (2005, Seijun Suzuki)

Last night I headed over to the Arclight where the AFI fest was showing Seijun Suzuki's latest, PRINCESS RACCOON. This movie was an absolute delight. For those of you who might have seen some of Suzuki's wildly expressionistic gangster films of the '60s, rest assured that in doing a period piece fantasy, in no way has he lost his touch. In fact, he's gotten even more bizarre in his old age, mixing musical styles (oh yeah, it's a musical), tone, visuals, and even language (it's in Japanese, Mandarin, and Portuguese) left and right. But they're not just jumbled up willy-nilly for the sake of wackiness, which is what you'd see on Japanese TV, although this is a very funny movie. No, this movie shows the steady hand of an artist who looks at every scene and thinks, "How can I film this scene to best express what I want to show here?" What he comes up with to answer that question is stuff you've never before seen. It's marvelous.

This is showing again Thursday, November 10, at 12:15 P.M.

Tallies:
Seijun Suzuki (d) 6
Zhang Ziyi 6