by Peter Callaghan

Anna Sasaki is an outsider. With her short dark hair, gawky frame and keen interest in the arts (sketching), think Sue Perkins sans specs. A similarity which, on one reading of the film, extends to sexuality as well as appearance. More later. Shunned by fellow pupils for being quiet and teased by her cold foster mother Yoriko for having “an ordinary face”, Anna retreats from what she perceives to be an “invisible magic circle” into the shell of her imagination where she takes solace in drawing and dreaming.

After a particularly bad day at the office, an asthma attack renders her bedridden where she chides herself for being different and feeling like a social pariah. “I. Hate. My. Self.” she sobs. And just when you think it’s razor blades at the ready and you’re watching a five-minute short prior to the main feature, her foster mother sends her packing to the coastal village of Yoriko to spend a summer of respite at the home of her aunt and uncle and “come back nice and happy”. A treacly phrase if ever there was one which Anna likens to the whining of a goat. Miaow! Or rather, meh!

Step forward Daphne Broon and Lofty from Eastenders aka aunt Setsu and uncle Kiyomasa Oiwa. The former a ruddy-faced bochle (Scots for “an awkward-footed female”), the latter a warm-hearted simpleton who is never happier than when playing with his wood – sawing and chiselling, I should add. One day, as Anna is taking a shortcut to post a letter to her foster mother (“feels nice”), she meets her nemesis in the shape of Nobuko Kadoya. Nob for short. A larger than life class president for whom boys, gossip, shopping and (judging by her swelling girth) pies hold a particular allure. A fact which later gives rise to the stinging insult of “fat pig”.

But before it descends into handbags-at-dawn, Anna’s agoraphobia kicks in and she flees to the harbour where she stumbles across an old silo (“best to stay away from there”) and a supposedly haunted house which to Anna “feels familiar”. With the tide out, she tip-toes over marsh and rock pools to explore further. The garden is overgrown, the curtains are closed and from what little she can see of the interior the rooms are bare and the dust is thick. Nothing to see here, she thinks. However, after hastily making her way back to the harbour following a sudden return of the tide, she glances back to the mansion and spots a light in an upper room. What the Fukushima! The seeds of mystery are sewn.

Upon Anna’s second visit, she catches sight of a young girl at a window who is having her Barbie blonde hair brushed by an elderly maid. She is everything Anna isn’t and is captivated. But when she makes enquiries with her aunt she is met with a throaty laugh of incredulity. It is a vacation home for foreigners, ha ha ha! It has changed hands a few times, ha ha ha! But it is now, has for a long time been and looks certain to remain vacant, ha ha you get the gist! That night, Anna’s dreams are filled with fleeting glances of the girl with the long blonde hair. As she said about the mansion, she “feels familiar”. But how? Who is she? And, more importantly, is she real, a ghost or as Ebenezeer Scrooge said upon seeing Jacob Marley “an undigested bit of beef” which has affected her senses?

In the lead up to her third-time-lucky visit, Anna is forced to don a kimono and attend a traditional Japanese festival called Tanabata which celebrates the meeting of two lovers who according to legend are separated by the Milky Way and only allowed to meet on the seventh day of the seventh month of each year. A fitting occasion for what is to follow between Anna and the girl with the golden hair later that evening. But before they meet, trouble ensues in the form of Nobuko “Fat Pig” Kadoya who teases Anna about the colour of her eyes and plunges her into a sea of self-pity. “I. Hate. My. Self.” she screams once again before running off into the darkness, climbing aboard a boat and rowing towards the concrete walls of the haunted mansion’s jetty at a rate of noughts which would literally leave her between a rock and a hard place.

“Throw me the rope,” shouts the girl with the golden hair. “You’re like the girl I saw in my dreams,” replies an awestruck Anna. “It’s not a dream,” whispers Barbie aka Marnie. “You’re my precious secret.” And if that’s not a reference to the beginning of a clandestine lesbian romance, I’ll eat my kasa. Particularly given that it’s followed by lines of dialogue such as “I love you more than any girl I’ve ever known” and “I missed you, come to my room” as well as a host of references to classic cinematic love scenes including Romeo and Juliet’s balcony tryst and Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio’s “I’m flying” at the helm of the Titanic.

But to think of their brief but beautiful relationship which lasts all but one summer solely in terms of sexuality is to do the film a disservice because it is about much more than that. Themes of friendship, sexual awakening, cutting of the apron strings, reconciling the past with the present and having the courage to unlock your heart and say how you feel to those you love most feature strongly as the seemingly polar opposite girls forge a close friendship and come to the speedy realisation that (to quote the late Jo Cox) “we have far more in common than that which divides us.” But who is Marnie? Why does she seem familiar? And how is it that one minute she is present and the next she is gone? The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind of a ten quid ticket to the flicks.

But rest assured, if you are lucky enough to track down a screening (it’s on limited release), you won’t be disappointed. Nor will your family. Because although it contains some weighty themes, When Marnie Was There – directed and co-written by the Japanese animator Hiromasa Yonebayashi from the same studio that brought us Spirited Away and The Wind Rises – carries a Universal rating meaning that it is suitable for “audiences aged four year and over”. Quite what Joan G. Robinson, the author whose ghost story of the same the film is based, would have made of it – who knows. As the Norfolk Broads are a far cry from the narrow streets of the fourth largest city of Japan. But I, for one, found the tale of “the girl trapped behind the blue window” enchanting.

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Peter Callaghan
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