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Whoa. Weird.

Seijun Suzuki’s Princess Raccoon is frequently wonderful, frequently irritating, always gorgeous to look at and mostly pretty difficult to follow. Drawing upon the rich Japanese fields of kabuki plays and tanuki folklore, veteran director Suzuki has sought to create an absurd, colourful funhouse of a musical, and has mostly succeeded.

The mythical tanuki is a shapeshifting, fun-loving and mischievous raccoon dog, and we are informed at the movie’s opening that love between a human and a tanuki is … (read more)