Best known for the crazy yakuza movies Branded to Kill and Tokyo Drifter, Japanese director Seijun Suzuki has always marched to the beat of his own drum.

But here he stages an entire opera to this beat; stage bound save for a small number of exterior shots, with theatrical set-dressing (cut-out props etc) and pop-video back projection.

Usually something as loony as Princess Raccoon is only greenlit because of huge star presence, and the film does boast House of Flying Daggers’ Zhang Ziyi as the titular raccoon royalty, and she sings all her own songs in Japanese (more than she was allowed to do for Memoirs of a Geisha).

But, the tenacious Suzuki would have made this movie anyway: the praise should go to Zhang Ziyi for doing something so offbeat.

Now that she’s Westernized her name to Ziyi Zhang, let’s see if she chooses anything as non-commercial again.

Though boasting the slenderest of stories, with borrowings from Japanese kabuki and Noh-theatre, traditional legend, plus Snow White and Romeo and Juliet, Princess Raccoon is unlike any other film experience you’ll have this year.

It’s an opera, a popera and a hip-hopera, with songs in all musical styles from pensioner rapping (has to be seen to be disbelieved), to romantic Japanese enka to South American mambo.

The tanuki actors sometimes wear masks, sometimes not, and for audiences wondering why they constantly pound their bellies, this is tradition claims tanuki’s bellies are similar to drums.

That the film cannot hold itself together is inevitable, and as many will find it boring as thrilling. Plus, the 111 minutes stretches the film to breaking point and features ten endings too many.

Acting honours go to Zhang Ziyi who remains a delight to watch even as the movie threatens to implode, while Odigari is adequate, if wet, love interest.

Shorn of twenty minutes Princess Raccoon could have been the cult item of 2006. At a somewhat laborious near two-hours it’s at times dazzling, infuriating, colourful, boring and delightful.

See it on a big screen, with state-of-the-art sound and a wide, wide open mind.

Rob Daniel