Ghoul friends
‘I hate myself,” 12-year-old Anna thinks, setting an appropriately melancholy tone for Japanese animation company Studio Ghibli’s adaptation of a British youngadult novel from the 1960s. An outsider in her school, Anna’s good at art but prone to anxiety-induced asthma attacks, as well as angst about being an orphan.
Sent away to the country to stay with her foster mom’s relatives and get healthier, she finds herself drawn — as so many Gothic heroines do — to a rambling old mansion across the marsh, said to have been uninhabited for years. There, she meets a blond girl her own age who becomes her first real friend — except for the part where the friend, Marnie, may not be real.
“When Marnie Was There” keeps up the tradition of Ghibli’s unparalleled rendering of natural beauty, but it also, more interestingly, has a fine ear for the intensity of girlhood friendships and the dark places of childhood that adults tend to miss. The strangely blond Marnie appears to lead a fabulously wealthy life with her jet-setting, party-throwing parents, until Anna learns she’s been raised, and bullied, by maids and nurses. Anna, for her part, isn’t just a social outcast — she’s actively sort of awful at times, calling one new friend a “fat pig” out of nowhere. But the two form a friendship that teaches both how to love — and then, in a moving final act, Anna learns the truth about Marnie’s back story from a new resident of the marsh mansion. Subtle, sometimes really sad, and honest about the struggles of adolescence, “Marnie” is a worthy last entry from Ghibli before the studio reportedly goes on hiatus. In Japanese, with English subtitles. Running time: 103 minutes. Rated PG (some scary material). Now playing.