Review of 'Little Amélie or the Rain Character': impressive and mature animation

It's the double whammy of an earthquake and a piece of delicious white chocolate from Belgium, a country famous for its sweets, that awakens two-and-a-half-year-old Amélie (voiced by Loïse Charpentier) to the wonderfully dangerous world around her.

Mischievous and cunning, the little heroine of the sublimely beautiful animated film “Little Amélie or the Rain Character” communicates for the first time in voice-over from the void of nothingness before she is born. He declares himself a powerful deity and explains that God is essentially a “tube” that constantly ingests and secretes experiences and things. That description could also apply to human existence in a general sense if the philosophical complications that give us meaning are removed. (Thankfully, we are more than all-consuming vessels.)

But until the earthquake and the chocolate move her, Amélie refuses to engage with reality, watching without making any effort to move or speak, as if disgusted at having been born. Their absolutist views on what it means to be alive slowly fade in the first feature from co-directors Liane-Cho Han and Maïlys Vallade, a film adaptation of Amélie Nothomb's 2000 autobiographical novel, “The Character of the Rain,” popular in French-speaking countries.

Like Impressionist paintings, the animation here decidedly lacks intricate designs, opting instead for flat tones to color figures without visible outlines. The stylistic choices result in a striking and clearly painterly aesthetic in line with previous projects Han and Vallade worked on, such as “Long Way North” and “Calamity,” both directed by Rémi Chayé.

Third daughter of a Belgian family living in Japan in the 1960s, young Amélie develops a close relationship with the housekeeper Nishio-san (Victoria Grobois). While her parents are busy with her older siblings, Amélie explores nature and falls in love with Japanese culture. The fact that the caring Nishio-san does not impose her perspective on the girl, but rather literally tries to perceive every moment from her height, indicates a bond closer to a mutual one.

It is through Amélie's gaze (or, more precisely, how these filmmakers visually interpret her) that we begin to understand her invigorating fantasy. At first, it seems like his mood swings quickly affect the weather; Later, Amélie goes into the ocean and it separates as it did with Moses (if only in her restless imagination). A person his age is inherently self-centered and unaware that he is part of a greater whole.

To illustrate Nishio-san's account of how he lost his family during World War II, animators Han and Vallade focus on the dish he is cooking: chopped vegetables fall into a pot like missiles, a burst of pot steam represents an aftermath of fire, underwater rice shows how Nishio-san had to dig her way out of being buried alive. The gruesome subject matter translates into immediate domestic images that someone Amélie's age could capture.

When Nishio-san tells Amélie that the Japanese word “ame” means rain (much like her own name), the girl takes it as confirmation that her kinetic, unbridled, visceral impulses are natural. Her feelings of kinship with precipitation are transmuted into a delightfully conceived scene in which tiny versions of Amélie appear within each falling raindrop. These fanciful cases benefit from Mari Fukuhara's score, a drizzle of aural luminosity.

Amélie's loud approach becomes more nuanced as she faces the death of a loved one, as well as her own mortality following two accidents. Han and Vallade also make room for their understandings of the injustice of life and the inevitability of pain, all communicated through fantasies that only animation can bring to life.

In turn, Amélie is surprised to learn that she is not Japanese, even if that is the country she considers home. Their future may be determined by Kashima-san (Yumi Fujimori), the landlady who owns the house Amélie's family rents and who brought Nishio-san to help them. Kashima-san distrusts Westerners (his war wounds haven't healed) and seeing Nishio-san in love with Amélie feels like a betrayal.

The larger implications of her presence escape the little girl, but the fact that Amélie, even at her age, is able to empathize with Kashima-san's desperation speaks to the thematic richness and emotional maturity that Han and Vallade channel into their energetic and fascinating character. The gently transcendent and heartbreaking conclusion of “Little Amélie” suggests that memory serves as our only remedy for loss. As long as we don't forget it, what we appreciate will not become ephemeral.