Paprika Review

Kon's editing is the subject as much as the plot is. Scenes cut on a matched shape, a gesture or a sound, and the film keeps performing that trick until the audience stops trusting which layer it is on, which is exactly what happens to the characters once the stolen device lets anyone walk into anyone else's dream. The parade of appliances, dolls and refrigerators is the image everyone remembers, and it works because Madhouse animates it as a crowd with weight rather than as a montage of gags.

As a story it is thinner than the technique. The corporate conspiracy is functional, the villain's motive is stated rather than felt, and Paprika and Chiba are closer to a pair of registers than to a full character, though the performance holds them together. What the film has instead is momentum and confidence. It runs ninety minutes, wastes none of them, and the closing sequence makes an argument about cinema itself without ever stopping to explain the argument. Kon died before finishing another feature, and this remains the clearest statement of what he could do.