Young love in turmoil on Poppy Hill
From Up on Poppy Hill
(out of 4) Starring the voices of Sarah Bolger, Gillian Anderson, Chris Noth and Anton Yelchin. Directed by Goro Miyazaki. 95 minutes. Opens March 22 at TIFF Bell Lightbox. Spring is in the air in Yokohama and so is the prospect of young love in From Up on Poppy Hill, a Japanese animated film based on the 1980s shojo manga comic of the same name by Tetsuo Sayama and Chizuru Takahashi.
Actually, the film is set in the early 1960s — just after Tokyo was awarded the 1964 Summer Olympics — and revolves around Umi, who lives (and mostly runs) the boarding house owned by her grandmother.
Umi’s daily ritual, in addition to feeding her younger siblings and the boarders, includes raising a series of maritime nautical flags as a tribute of sorts to her father, lost at sea during the Korean War, in the vain hope that he will return.
Umi (voiced in English by Sarah Bolger) and Shum (Anton Yelchin), a boy at her school, grow increasingly attached as they work together to rally their fellow students to save the school’s decrepit clubhouse, called Quartier Latin, which is facing the prospect of demolition.
As The Bard said, the course of true love never did run smooth, and may be thwarted in this particular case when it emerges that the two may have the same father. It will take an old photograph of three young naval officers to help unravel the truth.
Director Goro Miyazaki, son of famed Japanese director/animator/manga artist Hayao Miyazaki ( Spirited Away) follows his father’s footsteps in his second feature, presenting a lovely, affecting story at a leisurely pace, one likely to appeal to young audiences — especially teenagers — and possibly even to jaded adults, who may look back on their own first yearnings of puppy love with nostalgia and affection.
The score by Satoshi Takebe is lively, with a strong Western influence, including jazz and classical piano. There are also familiar tunes, including the refrain from the mournful Red River Valley and that iconic Japanese song of the era, “Sukiyaki.” You’ll know it when you hear it. The English version stars many famous voices, including Gillian Anderson, Chris Noth, Christina Hendricks and Aubrey Plaza.
What the film may be missing for Western audiences is context, which would add to the richness of the story. Japan, in the early 1960s, is emerging from the ruination and occupation it endured following the Second World War. It’s a country that is experiencing a rebirth and a new-found confidence, embodied in its spirited protagonists, the take-charge Umi, struggling to come to terms with her past (her missing father) and industrious Shum. The animation by Studio Ghibli, co-founded by Miyazaki the elder, is not entirely successful. While the natural backgrounds of trees and flowers are wonderfully rendered, with more than a trace of Monet’s Impressionist paintings, and the urban streetscapes are reasonably well done, the drawing of some of the characters themselves — especially some of the boys — borders on parody, bearing a strong resemblance to scowling Samurai caricatures. But that’s a minor issue and surely won’t prevent audiences of all ages from enjoying the film’s gentle story of young love and youth empowerment.