Whisper of the Heart (1995)

[耳をすませば]

Director: Yoshifumi Kondo
Starring: Yoko Honna, Issei Takahashi, Takashi Tachibana

Synopsis:
A girl struggling with her plans for the future obsesses over a mystery boy whose name appears in all the books she checks out from the library.

Impressions:
This is the first and sadly only directorial feature by Yoshifumi Kondo, who was supposed to headline the new generation of Studio Ghibli filmmakers until his untimely death. The movie starts with relatively stock adolescent melodrama, but once Shizuku finds her calling as a writer and commits herself to penning her first story, the film becomes something more. Any creative type can appreciate her struggles and it's interesting to see two young people go against the rather rigid norms of Japanese society. It seems odd that "Take Me Home, Country Roads" features so prominently in such a Japanese story, but it does help make the rather standard beginning stand out more. While this is a fairly grounded story, we do get several sequences from Shizuku's story as she's writing it which are quite imaginative. (I almost want to see a movie version of that.) While the film doesn't have the same impact as the works of Miyazaki or Takahata, it's a promising debut and I would've liked to see what Kondo would have gone on to do. Unfortunately, this glimpse of his potential is all that we have. Give it a watch.

Rating:
Watch It