Love is a Language Season: Whisper of the Heart (Dir Yoshifumi Kondō, 1h57m, 1995)

Animation is home to some of the greatest love stories of all time. Even if you step outside the Disney canon, where practically every major story concerns itself with a Prince and/or Princess falling in love, and eventually getting married, which, by the way, means glossing over two of the best romance films period ever made (Beauty and the Beast and Sleeping Beauty), animation is rife with beautifully rendered love stories. These run the gamut from off-beat-WALL-E, Ernest and Celestine, and A Monster in Paris, to the spectacular, Thief and the Cobbler, to the bitter-sweet, Up and Chico and Rita. Romance and animation go together perfectly, where the suspension of the normal rules of cinema in lieu of complete imagination can see couples dance across the sky, or where the seemingly incompatible can make a life together.

Of course, this is without mentioning Japan where everything from big-screen finales to popular series, (Macross: Do you Remember Love), manga adaptations, including the burgeoning market for female (shoujo) comics (Doukyusei, Stranger by the Shore, Anthem of the Heart and The Girl Who Leapt through Time), and of course a positive truckload of original stories, ranging from the bizarre A Whisker Away to the charming Josee, the Tiger and the Fish to the offbeat Words Bubble Up Like Soda Pop. (Let me put it like this, I could have done an entire season on just Japanese animated romances and still had dozens left for next year).

Studio Ghibli, of course, are no exception; for a studio that's built a reputation on fantastical fare, their films often hinge on refreshingly relatable romances, often given as much of a sweeping scale as the events surrounding them, seen best in 1997's Princess Mononoke and 2005's Howl's Moving Castle. Equally, charming, though, are Ghibli's more urbane love-stories, that remain as magical, and beautifully animated as their more magical-realistic fables, from Takahata's slow-burning coming-of-age tale, Only Yesterday and Goro Miyazaki's fine Up on Poppy Hill, to the underrated Ocean Waves.

Greatest of all, though, is Whisper of the Heart, adapting the manga by Aoi Hiiragi, the only film directed by Yoshifumi Kondō, who tragically died not long after the film's release, in which, against the backdrop of the outskirts of Tokyo, a girl (Shizuku Tsukishima, (voiced by Yōko Honna/Brittany Snow) finds herself falling in love with a boy (Seiji Amasawa, voiced by Issei Takahashi/David Gallagher) with shared literary interests, both of them having to choose between each other, their academic success and their creative interests, in a beautifully made, and charmingly sweet film about first love, creativity, and a mysterious cat that our heroine finds herself drawn to write about.

It is this at-first mismatched couple that the film centres around, but, as with all Ghibli films, what first catches the eye is just how evocative this film is; from its opening shots, accompanied by Olivia Newton-John's cover of John Denver's "Take Me Home, Country Roads", a piece of music that not only drives the early plot but hindered the film's release for nearly two decades in the west, we are given a beautifully rendered, impeccably detailed hand-drawn recreation of 1990s Tokyo at night. It is, if nothing else, certainly the most memorable opening sequence of any Ghibli film, and we are soon introduced to our heroine, Shizuku, a girl studying for her high school entrance exams on summer holiday, whilst balancing looking after the flat for her parents and her active social life with friend Yūko.

Shizuku, in sharp contrast to most of Ghibli's heroes, is at first aimless, even if both her Japanese and English voice actors give her a charming sweetness, as she drifts through summer by writing lyrics for her junior high school graduation ceremony to the tune of " Take Me Home, Country Roads". However, whilst taking out books from the library, she comes across the recurring name of Seiji Amasawa, and soon finds herself contending with the mystery of who this boy is, and his relation to further books donated under the name of Amasawa, and a rude, and often condescending classmate who mocks her lyrics. Further, and stranger, she comes across a cat travelling via train, and follows it to an antique shop, full of strange and beautiful items, including a magnificent clock, and the Baron Humbert von Gikkingen (voiced by Shigeru Tsuyuguchi/Cary Elwes), a statuette of an aristocratic cat, before meeting the kindly owner, Shiro Nishi (Keiju Kobayashi/Harold Gould)

Soon discovering that the boy she has previously encountered is none other than Seiji, who is further revealled to be Nishi's grandson. Initially disappointed, she begins to uncover the passion that drives him is not that different from hers, and that Seiji is planning to become a violin maker, and is soon to leave to Italy. Once more. "Take Me Home, Country Roads", plays a part, Seiji admitting that he liked her lyrics for the song, and the duo bonding over them playing the song together, eventually joined by Seiji's grandfather and two of his friends. It is, undeniably, the most famous sequence of the film, and certainly its emotional high point, the two of them finally realising their friendship. With Seiji's journey to Italy fast approaching, so the duo agree to push each other to their goals, with Shizuku agreeing to write over the next two months until Seiji returns from his studies.

So begins what is, in essence, the other part of the film's narrative. We follow Shizuku into a film about the struggle of the creative process, and it is here, having gained Nishi's permission to use the Baron as her protagonist, setting off after his lost love (and the representation of the missing statue of the pair), Louise, that the film leaps into its most fantastic, most surreal, and most Ghibliesque moments. We follow them in two beautifully animated moments, the backgrounds drawn by Japanese surrealist, Naohisa Inoue, in which the Baron guides Shizuku through an adventure she herself is writing. The rest of the novel's production, however, is not as serene, and we begin to see Shizuku struggle, not only with her home life, but also with her academic one.

As she increasingly works into the early morning to finish her story, so her parents, and older sister become concerned by this sudden deterioration in her grades, even as Shizuku tries to hide her true intentions, and indeed, her fears that Seiji will never return. Nowhere is this felt more than in the beautifully desperate moment where, almost falling off her chair, Shizuku stumbles from her desk and practically collapses into bed, exhausted, the weight of her task almost overwhelming. Yet, despite everything, she carries on, determined to prove herself to her parents, and to herself, as a writer, and the moment where she finally presents the work to Nishi, is at once cathartic and stressful, before the film's denouement beautifully ties together not only these two people creating and driving each other to great success, but where they realise their feelings for each run so much deeper than this. Cue, one more time "Take Me Home, Country Roads", and perhaps the sweetest of all Ghibli's endings.

Whisper of the Heart is something of a outlier; compared to the magical worlds that so many other Ghibli films create, it may seem that it stands alone. Indeed, Ghibli's only other film that focuses on creativity and love as much as Whisper is the far more nuanced, and far bleaker The Wind Rises, whilst only Up On Poppy Hill focuses as much on a romance. There's something bittersweet that we never saw another film from Kondo, something charmingly small-scale about a film that, at its basis, concentrates on a couple's growing relationship and dual struggles with the act of creation.

Whisper of the Heart may not have the magical worlds or otherworldly characters of Ghibli's other work,.but it is undeniably a film of magic, where, against the backdrop of 90s Tokyo, two people find themselves in creativity, and find love in each other.

Rating: Must See

Next week, and indeed, next month, we discuss the work of the legendary Jean-Luc Godard, beginning with the film that perfectly encapsulates the French New Wave: 1960's Breathless (À bout de souffle).

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