Little Amélie Or The Character Of Rain Review: A Wondrous Coming-Of-Age Tale That Transcends Space & Time

Little Amélie or the Character of Rain subverts the creation myth into a heartwarming tale of the self-actualization of a small child. It is an exquisitely animated tale, technically told in flashback from the point of view of its precocious, tiny protagonist (Loïse Charpentier). Though it is digitally rendered, the individual frames are brimming with the expressiveness of Claude Monet’s Water Lilies series as animated in the style of Hayao Miyazaki. Through this unique aesthetic palette, directors Maïlys Vallade and Liane-Cho Han craft a coming-of-age parable that frames burgeoning adulthood through the pain of loss, and, by extension, the joy of discovery.

Adapted from the autobiographical novel by Amélie Nothomb, Little Amélie follows a Belgian family living in post-war Japan, starting in August 1969. Amélie’s father (Marc Arnaud), a diplomat, has been stationed here for some time, yet Amélie is the first of the three children to be born here. Theirs is an idyllic life unhampered by the changes of a socially progressive world, with Vallade and Cho Han framing everything through the baby’s eyes.

With inventive detail, the film takes a certain Japanese folkloric idea literally, that children are gods until the age of three. That’s certainly how Amélie sees herself. As told through her, the creation of the universe happened through something like a tube which squeezed out the building blocks of our world (the French title is more directly translated to “the metaphysics of tubes.”) Though Amélie can talk, she chooses not to (or so she tells us), and it’s just as well for Marc and Daniele (Laëtitia Coryn), a pianist, who already have their hands full with their first two children.

But her stillness causes the pediatrician to immediately pronounce her a “vegetable,” a self-evidently silly prognosis that the parents do not take seriously. When Amélie does make noise, her baby sounds are her frustration, as she is a god trapped in a baby’s body. That frustration results in Amélie becoming a wrecking ball, and their house is turned into a veritable wreck. Taking pity on the parents’ inability to stay afloat, their neighbor, Kashima-San (Yumi Fujimori), sends Nishio-San (Victoria Grobois) to look after them.

But it isn’t until Amélie’s grandmother, Claude (Cathy Cerda), arrives that things start to settle into place. Claude magically gets Amélie to drop her guard with the single taste of Belgian white chocolate. Soon after, upon witnessing Nishio vacuuming, Amélie speaks her first word: aspirateur, or, vacuum cleaner. Giddy, the family members individually start to make her mimic their names. Amélie muses in voiceover that they seemed desperate for her to do so, “as if they needed me to say their names to know they existed.”

When Claude must leave to return to Belgium, Amélie’s sadness turns into boundless joy with the advent of her relationship to Nishio. Through her Japanese caretaker, Amélie’s field of vision is expanded, and her powers grow. Like any good piece of magical realism, Little Amélie is filled with moments of celestial wonder: when she tastes the white chocolate, she levitates in a golden glow; when she decides she’s had enough of the wintry grey, Amélie simply turns on spring by running her hands through the fields and commanding that flower bulbs open; when her grandmother departs, her anger causes an earthquake.

Vallade and Chan Ho’s film accomplishes a rare feat through its firmly placed POV. Some of these moments are easily explainable as coming from within the imagination of its child protagonist, but that is precisely what solidifies its directors’ iron-clad understanding of the power of a child’s mind. When you’re young and devoid of stale, scientific answers for the ways of the universe, the brain fills in the gaps. If you can’t explain how spring happens naturally, it is only natural to assume you made it happen by sheer force of will. Everything in the film is presented as a natural extension of Amélie’s desire, confusion, joy, sadness, and ballooning understanding of the world around her.

The film’s subtitle’s English translation is a reference to the way Amélie sounds curiously close to the Japanese word for rain, amé. The girl’s association with the weather pattern emanates from what she sees as an “exquisite” event. Rain is dangerous, tempestuous, invisible. So is Amélie, and so is the animation which moves to her whim. And the knowledge of her name’s meaning in Japanese causes her to definitively see herself as Japanese.

The revelation speaks to the filmmakers’ overall multicultural ethos. Being that the film takes place in Japanese history when it does, there is an implicit caution against blind nationalism. The not-too-distant memory of the damage to Japan caused by Western forces threatens to mar the undeniable bond between Nishio and Amélie, who, though a god, cannot understand death or the concept of racism.

To put it in a kinder way, Little Amélie is a delicate testament to the power of solidarity and the ability of children to heal wounds across space and time. In what is perhaps the film’s most moving segment, Amélie gifts Nishio a large, seemingly empty jar. When the top is lifted, a luminous swarm of memories tumbles out — and with it, a glimpse into Nishio’s own childhood. The scene suggests a powerful promise, that Amélie’s own joy could fill in the gaps of her friend’s. In this way, Little Amélie argues that nothing is impermeable, even the seeming differences of two generations from two once-warring cultures.