Paprika

Satoshi Kon adapts Yasutaka Tsutsui’s 1993 novel, but the image everyone remembers is his own: the parade of discarded objects is not in the book. Kon traced its route from desert through jungle, over a bridge, finally spilling into waking life. It is a measuring device rather than a riddle: each return shows how much of the boundary has worn away. His second large change is the detective. Kon folded two of the novel’s characters into one and rebuilt Konakawa’s past around filmmaking, so the nightmare interrupting him comes from a film he never finished. The dream material plays like a screening, not a trail of clues, and the emotional weight sits with the policeman rather than the therapist. The two bartenders of the Radio Club are voiced by Tsutsui himself and by Kon. Susumu Hirasawa’s score carries vocals made with Vocaloid software; it took the music prize at the 2007 Tokyo Anime Awards, where the film won the domestic feature category. It competed for the Golden Lion in Venice without taking a prize. It is the last feature Kon completed. A good fit if you accept being dropped inside a dream before anyone explains the DC Mini, and read Konakawa’s unfinished film as the spine. Not for anyone expecting every crossing between sleep and waking to be marked.