On Criterion in July 2021, I watched Paprika, a 2006 anime film by Satoshi Kon. I heard of his name from Perfect Blue, but hadn’t seen any of his movies. This one was pretty trippy, about a psychiatrist named Atsuko using a machine to enter her patients’ dreams to study them, while also entering as an alter ego detective named Paprika to further investigate on their real thoughts. When the machine gets stolen, Atsuko and her staff race to find it to prevent it being used for nefarious purposes, while also fighting their own psychological issues in their dreams.
I generally liked it, liking the strange dream imagery and the duality of the female lead character. I really wasn’t into the frequent fat-shaming of her colleague, a guy who is drawn to be very obese in a unattractive light, and who Atsuko treats with contempt. That whole part felt really gross and unnecessary.
I was getting shades of The Cell and In Dreams from this, and wasn’t surprised that Inception was partially inspired by this film. Overall, I thought it was pretty good, but since I’m not a big anime fan, I just liked it casually.
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