5/5

Review by John P. Harvey.

Amélie is aware from the time of her birth in Japan of her unique qualities, which include the capacity to see everything but understand nothing, as if her consciousness were locked in a clear glass tube. She feels, in some ways, overlooked by everyone except her father’s mother, Claude, who lives in Belgium, and live-in nanny, Nishio-san.

This is perhaps unsurprising; regardless of the depth of the thoughts she voices on screen, to the outside world, Amélie appears to be inert.

But Nishio-san’s attention to and generosity with her ignite an explosion of other abilities in Amélie: to venture, to explore, to wonder, to love, and to see the world from others’ viewpoints. And with this awakening comes her entry into the adventures of joy, conflict, hope, grief, despair, awe, gratitude, the riches of shared experiences, the power of passion, the central role of memory; and the film becomes an adventure in character development.

Its characters created sympathetically, placed in largely natural or traditional settings, and drawn in gorgeous palettes of block colour delightful to the eye, Little Amélie or the Character of Rain takes its audience back over a journey of discovery probably common to us all, and does it so naturally, so gently, so free of visual and auditory harshness, that it’s not until we’ve arrived at Amélie’s joyous finale that we realise where it’s taken us in the meantime.

Adapted from Amélie Nothomb’s novel The Character of Rain, this touching film is a gem for all ages, offering an engaging tale understandable by six-year-olds but revealing to adults insights that six-year-olds already live by. Little Amélie or the Character of Rain is an astonishing poetic achievement.

Screening at Palace cinemas.