When Marnie Was There is an unusual film from Studio Ghibli, even if certain elements – the nostalgia for traditional Japanese towns, the female protagonist, the gorgeous country landscapes – are all staples from the house’s earlier work. The pair immediately strike up a firm friendship, each promising not to tell a soul about the other. What really interests Anna is the huge, Victorian mansion she finds jutting out of a nearby marsh initially, the place seems empty, but Anna discovers that it’s home to a little blonde girl called Marnie. Anna stays with her rustic aunt and uncle, the latter a sculptor with his own line in chintzy novelty items – owls with googly eyes and the like. But in Marnie, that magical world is more low key and spectral than Totoro’s kingdom of benign woodland spirits. Like a low-key My Neighbour Totoro, When Marnie Was There is about a young girl discovering a magical world far outside the urban sprawl. But the asthma seems like a euphemism for far more deep-seated problems anxious, isolated and seemingly mired in self-loathing, Anna struggles to make friends and seems to avoid every opportunity to talk to strangers. A doctor tells Anna’s foster mother that the girl’s suffering from asthma, and that a break in the cleaner, rural air of her aunt and uncle’s village might do her good.
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