The actual title is If You Listen Closely (Mimi Wo Sumaseba). Shizuku is a young
teenage girl out of school for summer vacation and she checks out a lot of
books from the library. She begins
to notice another person is checking out many of the same books. She wonders who this could be? One day she is riding on the train and
she sees a cat riding by himself?
She decides to follow the cat to see where he lives and also to have an
adventure. She discovers a
different part of town she hasn’t seen before and she meets Seiji. He is an older boy who is learning to
carve violins and he wants to go to Italy to study this craft. Shizuku is impressed that he already
knows what he wants to do with his life.
She feels behind because she is trying to discover her own talents.
There is a LOT of feeling in the animation of this film. We experience Shizuku’s life living in
a cramped apartment and the stresses of the first day of school after summer
vacation. Shizuku also experiences the
angst of first love and worrying about her future. What is she good at doing and what does she like? What will she do with her life? 3 ½* (I liked this movie)
111 min,
Animation directed by Yoshifumi Kondo with the voices of Cary Elwes, Brittany
Snow, Ashley Tisdale, David Gallagher, James Sikking, Jean Smart, Harold Gould,
Courtney Thorne-Smith, Martin Spanjers, Mika Boorem, Abigail Mavity, Deanna
Russo.
Note: Imdb 8.0 out of 10, 91% critic 90%
audience on Rotten Tomatoes, Amazon 4.8* out of 5* with 375 reviews.
Special
Note: This is the only film
directed by Yoshifumi Kondo.
Studio Ghibli hoped he would become the successor to Hayao Miyazaki and
Takashi Tachibana. Unfortunately,
he passed away in 1998. The Cat
Returns released in
2002 focuses on the Baron, a minor character from this film. There is a scene in this movie of a
billboard advertising this movie.
No comments:
Post a Comment