Hey folks, Harry here and I'm one of those people that happen to love PRINCESS RACCOON, but then I also own every Seijun Suzuki film available on DVD and love them all. I think he's an amazing talent. Here's Amahagger Muggle with his closing looks at this year's ROTTERDAM INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL...
This is Amahagger Muggle from the 2006 Rotterdam Film Festival. The last days of the festival I saw some of the weirdest images ever put on celluloid. I pride myself for occasionally trying cinema that isn't mainstream, but DAMN! These were something else again.
Two days ago I saw "Princess Raccoon", a Japanese musical of sorts. And I have problems trying to describe it.
What prompted me to see this was an ecstatic review on this site last June. I advise you to look it up, you can find the article by doing a search in AintItCool for "flibble".
Finished reading it? Good.
Compare the information you just read with this: never have I seen so many people walk out of a screening before the end. I understand these people, and cannot blame them.
But I can also understand Mr. Flibble (I think), with his utter undying love for this movie.
"PRINCESS RACCOON"
Seijun Suzuki, Japan, 2005.
One of my friends said this: "Each year you see one real clunker at the festival, a film you barely want to give a rating of 1. Last year it was Miike Takashi's Izo, this year it's Princess Raccoon."
I do not agree with him, but I can see his point: this film is so way-out, so alien in its execution, that most people expecting a conventional narrative will be totally lost.
Imagine seeing a ballet for the first time without ever having known something like ballet existed. What do you make of it? You look at the acting. It's there but it differs from conventional acting so you feel unable to judge it. You listen to the music. It's there, some of it is catchy, but it supports something you don't understand so you feel unable to judge it. The dancing is obviously difficult to perform, and as such is to be admired. But as you cannot see what is form and what is improvisation, you cannot appreciate exactly how good the dancers are. Because of all this, you just see a bunch of beautiful people telling a simple story and you feel unable to connect to it.
This is exactly the feeling I got watching Princess Raccoon. The only film I can compare it to would be "Moulin Rouge", but "Princess Raccoon" is even more stylized and looks far more like a play on stage. And I don't know any of the songs.
The story is as follows: a king is jealous of his son's good looks. He orders a ninja to deport the prince to the demon mountain, where life is hell and no escape is possible. The ninja drugs and kidnaps the prince, but on the way to the mountain he has to travel through Tanuki forest.
Thankfully I knew about Tanuki from the Ghibli movie "Pom Poko", otherwise I would have had real trouble following much of the story. Tanuki are badger-like creatures resembling raccoons. The Japanese have many myths about these creatures, most importantly they can take human form and work magic. They can be seen as the Asian equivalent to Leprechauns, but are categorized as demons who are Mostly Harmless. In "Princess Raccoon" they look like people most of the time, barring the occasional potbelly or tail.
Anyway, these Tanuki fool the ninja and capture the prince. He awakes in the arms of the singing princess of Tanuki castle, played by Ziyi Zhang (who can take the place of my alarm clock any time, especially since she proves able to make the same noise). It is forbidden for a human and a Tanuki to love each other: guess what happens. Love makes the princess even more beautiful than the prince, so now the king wants to kill both of them, even though this might unleash a terrible curse upon him. Will the starcrossed lovers live happily ever after?
The translation of Princess Raccoons' original title would be "The Tanuki Castle Operetta". It would also be a better description. I expected a story with some songs, but this is a full-blown musical or an operetta indeed, without any spoken dialogue. You know the feeling when you watch a good Disney movie, and a song starts that you don't particularly like? Where you think, couldn't they just skip this song and get on with the story? When you don't expect a musical and suddenly find yourself watching one you get that feeling often. Which accounts for all of the people walking out, I think. The music styles used are all over the place, from classic to Peking opera to modern rock music. The acting and staging are likewise belonging to several different art forms. Obviously Seijun Suzuki has crafted a movie out of bits and pieces of everything he likes. It's shamelessly uncompromising in its form, and tells the viewer to join the ride or get lost. Which I respect, but that does mean whole sequences in the film are just... not for me, I guess.
Most of the sets show a bare minimum of props and have a drawn or computer-generated background. Don't expect super special effects either: as in a play on stage, every time something starts flying you can see the strings. By contrast the costumes are very beautiful. I can watch Ziyi Zhang reading the phonebook if necessary but thankfully she does a lot more here, most of it while dancing, and some of the outfits really show off her athletic physique. So while you won't exactly get bored, you can easily be overwhelmed by the audiovisual onslaught until everything turns into a soup of images and sounds you cannot place. So while this was certainly interesting to me I cannot easily recommend it.
People at our screening commented the movie might be better after using drugs, but no thanks. I get the impression the director already used plenty, as it's hallucinatory enough by itself.
The next day I went to an event called "De Nacht van de Wansmaak", a Belgian/Dutch event that can be translated as "The Night of Distaste".
"DE NACHT VAN DE WANSMAAK: LAATSTE EDITIE"
Max Rockatanski, Belgium, 2006.
That last part means "latest edition". These events are now quite legendary. In it, Belgian movie enthousiast Jan Verheyen (a.k.a. Max Rockatanski) presents a collection of excrusiatingly bad trailers, clips and shorts for a couple of hours, followed by an equally awful but entertaining main feature. The next "Night of Distaste" will start touring Belgium and the Netherlands later this year, so what we were shown this night was a preview of sorts, with the empty spots filled in with a "best of" from the past 15 years.
This year we were treated to, amongst other things, a 70's documentary on hardcore sexclubs in Denmark, an educational film for mentally handicapped girls named "All Women Have Periods" (directed by Val Guest no less), and a bunch of trailers from cheap King Kong clones. One of these clones, a Korean film called A.P.E was so bad, they showed twelve minutes from it because the trailer alone could not possibly convey its awfulness. The guy playing the ape waving an obviously dead shark around, pretending to be fighting it, is a sight to behold.
Need I explain the overall silly mood? Nearly everyone in the cinema had brought beer (the occasional bottle of wodka could also be spotted), and lewd behaviour onscreen would be welcomed by a chorus goodnaturedly yelling "WHORE!!!". Some of the trailers shown were:
"It Came Without Warning": horror-sf from 1980. Martin Landau and Jack Palance battle an alien who throws parasitic pancakes at them.
"The Shaolin Invincibles": kung-fu with the heroes fighting a couple of people wearing the fakest gorillasuits ever (including sneakers).
"Space Thing": sort of "Flesh Gordon" from 1968, with ugly people. WHORE!!!
"Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS": good for 600.000 paid tickets in Belgium and The Netherlands during its original release. WHORE!!!
"Messalina, Kaiserin und Hure": translates into "Messalina, Empress and Whore", goriest trailer ever for a sexfilm. WHORE!!!
"Three Superguys": a painfully unfunny cheap Bud Spencer/Terence Hill knock-off.
"J'ai Brule de Partout": which means "I'm hot everywhere". For budget reasons the trailer for this softcore flick shows just the title, nothing more. A favorite.
"Shocking Africa": a mondo-documentary from Italy. The trailer starts with a montage of African males being circumsized, tribal way. Ouch!
This years' main attraction was, to stay with the King Kong vibe, "The Mighty Peking Man" from the Shaw Brothers, an unrestored original Cantonese version from 1977 with subtitles in Mandarin and English. This was very entertaining indeed! The special effects may be bad, but there isn't a boring minute in the picture. The tarzan girl is spectacular (WHORE!!!), shamelessly exploited (WHORE!!!) with the skimpiest outfit ever (WHORE!!!). Also, I could get re-acquainted with the same discolorations I saw during "The Lady Avenger".
The whole event took 4 hours and I honestly cannot remember ever laughing this hard for such a long time. Jan Verheyen is great onstage (although the English spoken may not get the most out of it) and the general attitude is so relaxed and jovial that you just can't stop grinning like an idiot, except when you're gasping in shock. Highly recommended. If Jan Verheyen stages more of these in the future I'll certainly try to be there.
This was Amahagger Muggle, meaning without magic but easily bewitched.
PS: The public prize indeed went to "Eden" with a staggering 4.67 out of 5. It was a world-premiere of this festival, so you can say this movie got a kickstart!
