Children use dolls as proxies to experiment with their personalities and play out hypothetical scenarios. This fantasy zone acts as an early testing-ground for the unconscious, a chance for kids to take their id out on a walk while adapting to social norms. Pair this potential for raw animality with an uncanny, almost-human appearance, and it’s no wonder why dolls have been a horror film staple since the genre’s dawn. If a doll were to escape our control, there’s no telling what kind of havoc it could wreak.
Marino, the childlike protagonist of Hideyuki Kobayashi’s Marronnier (2004), is an average albeit quiet young woman living with her puppeteer brother. Her hobbies include brushing her teeth, going out with her friend Mitsuba, and dressing up in matching outfits with her beloved “marronnier” doll, which she got from a reclusive dollmaker up in the mountains. Unbeknownst to Marino though, her precious doll has a dark secret: its creator is a murderer who turns his victims into wax and uses their corpses to make his dolls in a process involving a vat of pink goo extracted from a nearby bog. The dollmaker’s sadistic assistant, Numai, is fixated on seducing Marino. He uses the marronnier doll to spy on her, and lures Marino and her friends to the dollmaker’s lair in a desperate attempt to entrap her forever. Once there, the dolls come alive and Marino is forced to turn against the toys she once loved most in a bloody fight to the end.
Playing for the first time ever in New York, Marronnier is a collaboration between director Hideyuki Kobayashi and famed horror mangaka, Junji Ito, who makes a brief cameo in the film. (After Marrionnier, Kobayashi went on to direct a puppet-based web series about the Godzilla Brothers.) The product of their collaboration is a lysergic SOV nightmare replete with doe-eyed dolls, homespun gore, and slapstick comedy. The score is soapy and the camerawork straight out of Power Rangers. Every image is soaked in a rich glow. Each scene transitions with a cross-dissolve. The resultant dreamlike effect leaves Marino unable to discern what is real and what is not. And we never know whether to laugh or to scream. Marronnier thrives in these ambiguities. The film, much like a doll, is a stitched together reflection of ourselves, made by a bit of an oddball and all the better for it.
Marronnier screens tonight, February 28, at Spectacle as part of the series “Anti-Valentines: Dolls.”
