I finally got to see the recently deceased Seijun Suzuki's _Princess Raccoon_, starring Zhang Ziyi whom I haven't seen in a long time. His last film is
every bit as insane and incomprehensible as _Tokyo Drifter_ and _Yumeji_ --
but they are all exhilarating to experience. This one is subtitled "an operatta" and is the most stagy of the three films of his I've seen. There
are song-and-dance numbers (but too many), sword fights, bright colors, stunning costumes, and filming in front of a stage props and backgrounds
which get changed in real time. It is mostly a very sweet and innocent love story between the Raccoon Princess (Zhang, using Mandarin to sub-in for the Raccoon language) and some Japanese nobleman's son. It could well be that
the copious DVD extras can shed light on the film; I look forward to seeing those.

For a while in the 2000s films with stage-like painted backgrounds were on
the ascend. A few years before Suzuki's feature was Eric Rohmer's _Lady
and the Duke_, starry Lucy Russell. The cinematography is very much in
the same vein, if less colorful. I am surprised to see Russell again
in _Toni Edrmann_ as a British ex-pat in Romania and "best friend" of
Ines Conradi (Sandra Huller) working as a financial consultant in Bucharest. Ines is a high-stress workaholic and loner who downsizes local companies
and outsource jobs for a living. She uses her coworkers for sex, is icy towards her subordinate Anca, and spends her free time shopping with her client's wife. She is impeccably polite and slyly strategic in manipulating and anticipating the client's business objectives. One day her hapless father (Peter Simonischek) shows up with no warning. She gives him the cold-shoulder. He surreptitiously stays behind, impersonates her client's life coach, and plays practical jokes on all her associates. The slow-boiling script
starts predictable and springs surprises that literally startle Ines (and
the audience) out of her seat. The climax finds Ines rediscovering some
of her humanity and her family's wild streak. It is unclear how much she
has changed -- in the coda she is off to Singapore with another consultant
firm notorious for downsizing companies (McKinsey) -- but she shares a bitter-sweet moment with her father again.

Too bad Manohla Dargis didn't write the NYT review (A.O. Scott stole the assignment). Dargis has been the biggest supporter of director Maren
Ade for years. It would have been interesting to see what she has to
say about the very functional, far-from-flashy cinematography. The only
film by Ade I've seen is the for-TV "Forest for the Trees," also about an awkward (but far less successful) professional woman shot in a documentary style. I should catch _Everyone Else_, about a couple on vacation, but
hate streaming videos. Maybe I'll get the DVD some time. Ade certainly distinguishes herself as a master script-writer. Bucharest is an evocative supporting player in the film, the glitzy high rise inhabited by the
financial types starkly contrasted with the dilapidated apartments and downright impoverished rural villages we get to see. Simonischek has the flashy role, but the uptight Huller is the real star. The icy blonde,
not conventionally beautiful, conveys the reserve and fierce inner self awareness that Isabelle Huppert had when she was more interesting. I
have seen Huller in an Austrian ennui exercise called _Brownian Movement_.
The film plays like a cut-rate Gotz Speilmann, but Huller certainly makes
it memoarble.

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