Whisper of the Heart

Rating G Formats DVD Genre animated Starring Brittany Snow, David Gallagher Directed by Yoshifumi Kondo Publisher Walt Disney Home Entertainment External Links Disney Home Entertainment Website

This Studio Ghibli release is not directed by Hayao Miyazaki, but the master's hand is present throughout the work. Miyazaki wrote the script based on an original manga by Aoi Hîragi, and he drew the storyboards before handing the project over to director Yoshifumi Kondo. In Kondo's hands the style and themes of the work consistently reflect Miyazaki's influence.

Like all things Miyazaki, Whisper of the Heart is a coming of age story infused with fantasy. In this case, the fantasies are those of young Shizuku, who spends her time buried in fairy tales and dreaming of adventure. Shizuku's real life romance when she discovers that someoneïsome manïis checking out all the books that she is reading just before she does. This sends Shizuku on a hunt for her mystery man. Along the way, she runs into a cat riding the subway alone and follows it to an antique shop in the hills. Shizuku befriends the elderly shop-owner, who is as steeped in fairy tales as she is. As the shop owner and his grandson encourage her to pursue her dream of becoming a writer, Shizuku learns to believe in her own creative potential.

Whisper of the Heart takes its name from the novel that Shizuku pours out over the course of two sleepless months, and the brief visions we see of her story-world reveal it to be a place churning with pubescent wish-fulfillment fantasies and riddled with the anxieties of a young girl at the end of her youth.

This film is a sweet and compelling portrayal of a girl on the cusp of young adulthood. It's characters are well drawn in both sensesïthey are visually authentic people with carefully nuanced personalities. Shizuku's gentle and preoccupied parents, her bossy but loving older sister, her nosy classmates, and her heart broken best friend are all fully realized with their own motivations and idiosyncrasies.

There are truly awkward moments as Shizuku bumbles through the complexities of young love. And there are moments when Shizuku's experience seems to reach beyond her young life, as when she suffers anxiously while the antique shop owner reads her novel for the first time. Few creative people will be unable to relate to Shizuku's worries and passion. The age-appropriate narcissism of the young artist as she struggles to identify herself as a creative person is expressed so directly here that it is hard not to feel a deep sympathy for her.

The love relationship that develops between Shizuku and her library-card mystery man is a little predictable. We know who her man is long before she does, but somehow this doesn't seem to ruin the effect. These characters and their love for each other is genuine enough that we don't mind that the "mystery man" plot doesn't amount to much. In fact, the whole device is smartly turned on its head and becomes an expression of the young man's efforts to gain the attention of the girl he loves.

Whisper of the Heart is appropriate and engaging for all ages, but is perhaps most relevant for viewers who can identify closely with Shizuku and her search for love and autonomy. Anime fans who have grown accustomed to high-intensity robot battles and the like will find this to be a slow and quiet Whisper. This is a patient film, a character study, a romance, and a very good movie for all that.