Little Amélie or The Character of Rain

While this may be a low concept story, the uniqueness of the animation makes this entertaining and even wholesome enough to watch. Not to mention, the deep yet simple relationship between Amelie and Nishio-san.

It's rare to find media about a toddler, and if they are, they often have to make the toddler act wise and mature beyond their years or they end up flat. While this is certainly true of Amelie, she does still have a childlike imagination and sulky petulance that grounds her.

My major issue is the third act. I feel like there was too much drama and doesn't really resolve anything nicely.

Overall though very cute, very wholesome feel-good story.

The story is moving, heavy with symbolism. Funny, sad, confusing, truly the world seen by a child.

Well written script that feels like reading a novel and listening to someone's story at the same time. Very metaphor heavy.

The best part is the animation. The small things are given so much detail as to make the world feel real. The painterly style is unique and you can see how much work went into every single frame. The expressive faces, the landscapes, the complex settings, the color theory ... both artistically and technically impressive.

Worth a watch. Family friendly feel good movie with some real depth.

It begins with a philosophical tone and never reaches the point of explaining its claims, leaving them in the realm of interpretation.

The true purpose of this narrative style seems to be serving as a foundation for imagery that is magical and fantastical.

Everything is used effectively, but it is a relatively slow film that requires time to appreciate, functioning as a reflective and emotional piece that stands out through its use of sound.

The sound design is executed with mastery, drawing on the setting and the child's imagination to immerse the viewer.

A deeply sentimental work with profound symbology.

Amélie Nothomb didn't strike me as the easiest writer to translate for children, even though in Metaphysics of Tubes she romanced her earliest memories, particularly those involving her Japanese nurse, to whom she owed boundless admiration. The thematic heart of the story is precisely this transition: from the "God-tube," an infant entirely self-centered on primal needs, absorbing everything but retaining nothing, to the little girl who, accumulating positive and negative experiences, gradually opens herself to the world, its concepts, emotions, and sensations.

More than the touching bond between the girl and her caretaker - emphasised more heavily in the novel - what stands out in this adaptation is the visual feast: the explosion of shapes and colours once the child emerges from her vegetative meditation upon discovering chocolate, the shimmering pastels evoked by even the smallest stroll in the garden, the veil of dreamlike or lucid fantasy that overlays each new discovery. These elements can't yet be fully understood, but their reinterpretation occupies a vital place in Amélie's imagination.

This animated adaptation positions itself somewhere between a children's film and an adult one. Despite a singular aesthetic direction that won't please everyone, it delivers sheer delight for the eyes while judiciously retaining enough of the author's words to let the adaptation breathe without burden. It's brief, perhaps, but more than enough to say everything that needs to be said.

The landlady is angry with the maid because she betrays her country by loving Amelie. The landlady has been angry that her husband and son were killed in the war. The maid is sad for she lost her family in the A bomb catastrophe. May I ask , who started the war? Who victimized millions of Chinese over various massacres? Why Japanese insist that they were the victims and forgot what they did to victimize others? This film tells a story from an innocent child's eyes, beautiful Japan experience, yes, a fascination of western ppl towards eastern culture ,yes. But in all , it's a fairytale of a wealthy Belge family enjoy sometime in kansai mountain villa, only sentiments.