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Written and directed by a music and visual arts collective known as toL, "Tamala 2010: A Punk Cat in Space" is a dark allegory and a dazzling example of Japanese anime. Although it moves between 3500 BC (Before Cats) to 1943 Verona, Italy, to Shanghai in 2032, it is set primarily in 2010, opening in Tokyo during a monsoon. The atmosphere, created by sooty, realistic sketches, is reminiscent of scenes in "Black Rain" or of the opening of a Takeshi Kitano gangster thriller.
But then the film abruptly switches to a stylized Neo-Deco look in a beautifully modulated black-and-white and shades of gray. Tamala is a venturesome 1-year-old cat -- never mind that she turns out to have been born in 1869. She looks like a feline Betty Boop, has a baby voice and has speech patterns that...