ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ

Seijun Suzuki's Princess Raccoon is an endearing but dizzyingly absurd musical. It's full of wicked stepmothers, sleeping potions, enchanted forests, and true love - a fractured fairytale of theatre, comedy, and colour.

Ziyi Zhang and Joe Odagiri bring straightfaced star power to the surrealism. Even so, the carefree insanity certainly won't work for everyone, and when the music starts the magic badly misfires. But problems aside, this is a film bursting with originality and fun.

When the vain Lord of Castle Grace, Azuki, learns that his daydreaming son Prince Amechiyo will overtake him as the fairest in the land, he despatches a ninja to run him out of the kingdom. Foolishly, the ninja takes Amechiyo through the Tanuki Forest (tanukis being, in Japanese folklore, shapeshifting demons disguised as raccoon-dogs). The ninja is swiftly set upon, leaving Amechiyo to fall for the Tanuki Princess. This prompts Azuki to come down to finish his son off himself, which in turn leads to a quest for The Golden Frog of Paradise and... well, I'm sure you get the idea. It's completely crackers.

It's in style, though, that the film proves strangest. A hallucinatory hybrid of Monkey and The Wizard of Oz, the camera sweeps around the woodcut backdrops while jumpy editing throws us around the disjointed plot.

"COMPLETELY CRACKERS"

You can't suspend your disbelief through all the madness: Princess Raccoon sometimes looks eerily like your average provincial panto, with Ziyi Zhang in the role of the grimacing soap star. But if you can hack the weirdness and the dreadful songs - and don't mind the odd five minutes of head-scratching - it's like nothing you've ever seen before.