Wolf Children

Saw Wolf Children, a cute little anime about a woman who falls in love with a werewolf man and gives birth to two little werewolf children. The father then vanishes, leaving this poor woman to raise two children who turn into dogs half of the time. She lives in the countryside however, so they're able to keep their secret for a while. The children however are caught between two worlds themselves. They are partly wild animals but they are also partly humans. They struggle to make both halves cohere.

The film is really nostalgic and cute. The soundtrack is full of piano and women's voices. The visuals are packed with studio Ghibli-style super-naturally beautiful nature, as though the whole world had been polished and painted. Nature and weather patterns feature heavily in the story, often causing a major plot movement. Wolves are used to symbolize a more pure connection to nature that the children have which the rural humans, with their plastic ponchos and rubber boots, are lacking. Tellingly, we are informed that there are no more wolves in Japan. (Oh, how we have lost our way!)

True to the nature of melodramatic Asian cinema, there are several sustained attacks on your heart strings. Late in the film, I began to rebel against the overwhelming cutesy-ness of it all, but I think by that point you're supposed to have already cried and to be willing to let the film get away with murder.

So this film is a winner. It's mostly a giant scoop of sugar with enough sad bits in so that you can feel comfortable happy-crying later. The visuals are amazing, the atmosphere of the film is great, and the characters are enough of a cypher that you can project onto them. Not a film with a lot to say, but a nice film and one I'll probably show other people some day.