A spirited Belgian moppet, indomitable in her curiosity and boasting eyes as green as a rolling summer meadow, learns about life, death and koi carp as she grows up with her family in the Japanese countryside in the 1970s. Maïlys Vallade and Liane-Cho Han Jin Kuang’s whimsical animation follows Amélie as the youngest of three children, but the only one to have spent the first few years of life in a vegetative state before being miraculously “cured” by an earthquake. When her pianist mother Danièle and diplomat father Patrick can’t quite juggle the new domestic routine, they bring in local home help Nishio-san, who forges a sweet bond with little Amélie.
Stories are traded, life lessons are ingested and cultural customs are exchanged, yet our knee-high heroine – who, incidentally, believes herself to be God – often learns about the fallibility of the human body in all the wrong ways. Although it’s hard not to see the overlap between Amélie and the similarly inquisitive Mei from Hayao Miyazaki’s My Neighbour Totoro, the similarities between the two films extend to an interest in visualising life’s tactile pleasures and animating a world of wonder that’s not so much unseen by the human eye, just largely ignored. With its vibrant use of colour, expressive character design and flights of expressionist fancy, Little Amélie offers a lyrical vision of early-years development and so much more.
