‘Little Amélie or the Character of Rain’ overview: Beautiful, mature animation

It’s the one-two punch of an earthquake and a bit of delicious white chocolate from Belgium, a rustic well-known for its candy confections, that awakens 2½-year-old Amélie (voiced by Loïse Charpentier) to the wondrous and dangerous world round her.

Rambunctious and astute, the toddler heroine of the sublimely stunning animated movie “Little Amélie or the Character of Rain” first communicates in voiceover from the void of nothingness earlier than beginning. She declares herself a robust deity and explains that God is basically a “tube” that continuously ingests and secretes experiences and issues. That description might additionally apply to human existence in a normal sense if you happen to take away the philosophical problems that give us that means. (We’re, fortunately, greater than all-consuming vessels.)

However till she’s stirred by the earthquake and chocolate, Amélie refuses to have interaction with actuality, observing with out making any effort to maneuver or speak, as if displeased with having been born. Her absolutist views of what it means to be alive slowly peel away within the life-affirming first characteristic from co-directors Liane-Cho Han and Maïlys Vallade, a display adaptation of Amélie Nothomb’s autobiographical 2000 novel “The Character of Rain,” well-liked in French-speaking international locations.

Akin to impressionistic work, the animation right here decidedly lacks intricate designs and opts for flat hues coloring figures with out seen outlines. The stylistic decisions lead to a hanging, distinctly pictorial aesthetic consistent with earlier initiatives that Han and Vallade labored on, corresponding to “Lengthy Method North” and “Calamity,” each directed by Rémi Chayé.

The third little one of a Belgian household residing in Sixties Japan, younger Amélie develops an endearing relationship with housekeeper Nishio-san (Victoria Grobois). Whereas her dad and mom have their palms full together with her older siblings, Amélie explores nature and turns into enamored with Japanese tradition. That the affectionate Nishio-san doesn’t impose her perspective on the lady, however fairly actually tries to understand every second from her top, alerts a bond that’s nearer to 1 between mutuals.

It’s by means of Amélie’s gaze — or, extra exactly, how these filmmakers interpret it visually — that we start to grasp her invigorating whimsy. Early on, it looks like her quickly altering moods have an effect on the climate; later, Amélie steps into the ocean and it elements because it did for Moses (if solely in her stressed creativeness). An individual her age is inherently self-centered, unaware that she is a part of an even bigger entire.

For example Nishio-san’s account of how she misplaced her household throughout World Warfare II, animators Han and Vallade zero in on the dish she is cooking: Chopped greens fall right into a pot like missiles, a gust of pot steam represents a fiery aftermath, rice underneath water exhibits how Nishio-san needed to dig her manner out of being buried alive. The grotesque subject material is translated into fast family imagery that somebody Amélie’s age might grasp.

When Nishio-san shares with Amélie that the Japanese phrase “ame” means rain (so near her personal identify), the lady takes this as affirmation that her kinetic, unbridled and visceral impulses are pure. Her emotions of kinship with precipitation are transmuted right into a delightfully conceived scene by which little variations of Amélie seem inside each falling raindrop. These fanciful cases profit from Mari Fukuhara’s rating, a drizzle of aural luminosity.

Amélie’s rowdy strategy turns into extra nuanced when she is confronted with a liked one’s dying, in addition to her personal mortality within the aftermath of two accidents. Han and Vallade additionally make room for her realizations about life’s unfairness and the inevitability of sorrow — all communicated by way of flights of fancy that solely animation can materialize.

In flip, it comes as a shock for Amélie to be taught that she just isn’t Japanese, even when that’s the nation she considers residence. Her future could also be decided by Kashima-san (Yumi Fujimori), the landlady who owns the home Amélie’s household is renting and who introduced Nishio-san on to assist them. Kashima-san distrusts westerners — her wounds of wartime haven’t healed — and to see Nishio-san smitten with Amélie looks like a betrayal.

The bigger implications of her presence escape the infant, however the truth that Amélie, even at her age, is ready to empathize with Kashima-san’s despair speaks to the thematic richness and emotional maturity that Han and Vallade channel of their brisk, arresting characteristic. The gently transcendent, tear-inducing conclusion that “Little Amélie” reaches means that reminiscence serves as our solely treatment for loss. So long as we don’t overlook, what we cherish received’t grow to be ephemeral.