Dream Spice

I have been remiss in not writing about a Japanese animated feature for grown-ups that I saw this past Sunday night, Satoshi Kon's Paprika. There's really no equivalent to this genre in the U.S., as there have been no R-rated animated features here that I remember since the 1970's when Ralph Bakshi put out Fritz the Cat, Heavy Traffic and Coonskin. Kon's picture is almost PG-13, but there's a little nudity and maybe some language I can't recall. Mainly it is an intriguing science fiction concept executed artfully for the adult mind to try and untangle.

I'll admit that I'm not a dyed-in-the-wool anime fan, but I like me those Miyazaki movies like Totoro and Spirited Away, and have come to terms with the plot issues inherent, it seems, to anime. Paprika is a better than most, even as the basic premise lends itself to arbitrary twists and obscure endings.

The basic plot is that a young female scientist named Dr. Chiba (maybe a joke for the pothead in-crowd?) is working with a device called the DC Mini that allows her to enter into the dreams of patients as a kind of guardian angel/detective alter ego named "Paprika". Paprika has, like her namesake spice, red hair, while Dr. Chiba is a brunette. Both are dedicated to their work, but Paprika is less stern than the psychologist, and one of the elements that kept me thinking was the differences between the two characters, that we're not just seeing Chiba in the dreams but an entirely different person who is somehow a part of her.

The make or break aspect of the movie is Kon's vision of dream states and, in the case of Paprika, essentially lucid dreaming. I've previously found dream representations in film and television to be maybe 5% of the actual dreaming experience, usually just there to forward the plot or pull a trick moment on the audience. Paprika does a lot better, maybe averaging in the high 60% range, higher in the opening sequence and I think one other. Sure, it's animation, so the tools are there to make stuff like this work, but more importantly there is are some great instances of dream logic, where running towards an objective becomes impossible like molasses, when attempting to vault a rail leads to the rail morphing away in the hand as the dreamer enters the falling state, and those patented Nightmare on Elm Street lack of transitions between waking and dreaming that leave the viewer wondering whether the scene started in reality at all.

I haven't seen Kon's earlier work, all of which sounds just as adult but less obviously trippy, but I like the human moments he drops in, certain reaction shots with minimal or no animation that play on characterization in a way uncommon to animated features in Japan or the U.S. There's also a few twists near the end, a subtle one intimating who's schtupping who and an admirable, if not perfectly convincing, romantic one at the end.

I guess Paprika isn't for everyone. It's modern, it's pop, it's Japanese, it's animated. Anyone who's already an anime fan is likely to be pleased with this advance -- both stylistic and thematic -- in that field of moviemaking. For those looking for an entree into this constantly growing, eye-pleasing genre, here you go.