Director: Maïlys Vallade, Liane-Cho Han

This gorgeously rendered animation, based on the Belgian writer Amélie Nothomb’s autobiography, charts an unusual cross-cultural upbringing in 1960s Japan.

Amélie is born in a vegetative state to a Belgian family. Her father is a diplomat. In voiceover the wide-eyed child says her condition, which requires everyone to do everything for her, makes her a god. An earthquake on her second birthday causes Amélie to come out of her state, enabling her to move around freely. She rejects her family, particularly her hated brother André, so her stressed father decides they must recruit a nanny. The kindly Japanese woman Nishio-san is brough in. Then Amélie’s mischievous grandmother arrives, who wins over Amélie with white chocolate from Belgium, and becomes the first person to make a real connection. As she spends more time with Nishio-san, Amélie becomes aware of the post-war trauma that burdens many Japanese people, and more cognisant of her own non-godlike mortality. The animation, pitched somewhere between Studio Ghibli and watercolours, is elegant, dazzlingly colourful and daringly impressionistic, and the story unfolds in a simple enough manner for children to follow, and there are musings on memory, loss and identity for grown-ups.

David Willoughby

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