When Marnie was There

Tweekums

Anna, a twelve year old girl, is living with her foster parents in Sapporo but she has asthma so they think it will do her good to spend the summer with her aunt and uncle in a small coastal town. Here she goes out intending to do some sketching; while out she sees an impressive mansion across the marsh. She paddles through the shallow water and finds a house that appears to have been abandoned. As she returns she thinks she sees a light in an upstairs window. She decides to return but the tide is high, however somebody has left a small boat on the dock which she uses to row to the Marsh House. Once here she meets a girl about her own age who tells her that she put the boat at the dock for her. We later learn that this girl is the Marnie of the title. There is something a little odd about her; sometimes it seems as though she just disappears and when she invites Marnie into her house it certainly doesn't seem abandoned.

When one thinks of Studio Ghibli one instinctively thinks of great directors Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata but they have now retired and we can just hope the next generation of directors can provide us with more iconic films. Director Hiromasa Yonebayashi is certainly getting off to a good start; first he directed 'Arrietty' and now this. The story is told at a very gentle, some would say slow, pace but for me that just served to bring me into Anna's world… of course it helped that everything looked so beautiful. Anna is an unusual protagonist; she is fairly unhappy much of the time; at least until she meets Marnie… and then there is the sense that Marnie is quire real. Her exact nature is uncertain though; is she a figment of Anna's imagination or a ghost or is there another explanation? There was certainly a haunting feel to the story as we waited to discover just who she is. The eventual revelation was delightfully bittersweet. The film will probably not appeal to the youngest viewers as it isn't the sort of story that stuff constantly happens and it is a bit sad at times; however I suspect slightly older children and their parents will enjoy it… even though it isn't officially 'shoujo' I expect it will appeal more to girls than boys. Overall I really enjoyed this; I just hope it isn't Studio Ghibli's final film as has been rumoured.

score 10/10

Tweekums 20 October 2016

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw3565216/