Little Amélie or the Character of Rain review: a beautiful animation with strong heart at Manchester Animation Festival 2025

★★★★

Based on the fictional autobiographical novel Métaphysique des tubes by Amélie Nothomb, Little Amélie or the Character of Rain tells the story of a toddler who, after years in a vegetative state, is brought to life by a piece of white chocolate her grandma gives her – and believes she is God. An intriguing basis for a story, its complexity comes not only from the abstract concept but also its historical backdrop: Amélie is born to ex-patriot Belgian parents in Japan, after the events of World War Two.

Little Amélie does something new with the coming-of-age genre: most often centred around teenagers or young adults, characters usually face tension between innocence and experience, finding a balance between nostalgia and the desire to blossom into adulthood. Amélie's young age leaves no room for nostalgia or anxieties. Her vision is expansive, and everything present is of high importance. A sensory experience as well as an emotional one, the detailed sounds and pastel colours make you lose yourself completely in Amélie's world.

Through Amélie, we see the world around her unfold anew. She understands every event and every image with herself at the centre, calling us back to a much-forgotten period of life where the world seemed infinitely large, and ourselves with it. Her tantrums make earthquakes, she is the rain itself, their spring garden blooms for her. She graces her family by speaking their names, acknowledging their existence, and withholds this privilege from her tormenting brother.

However, we, the viewer, understand the reality of her believed omniscience: there is so, so much she does not understand, including why her parents and older siblings refuse to take ‘God’ seriously. Amélie feels misunderstood by all except her grandmother, who gifted her with divine white Belgian chocolate – until she bonds with Nishio-san, the family’s housekeeper. Their attachment forms the central heart of the film, Nishio-san guiding little Amélie through life’s mysteries and difficult truths with a pure affection.

The bond between Nishio-san and Amélie is both the most compelling and the most fraught with tension. It exists in spite of cross-cultural tension between Japan and the Allied forces: set in the 1960s, its Japanese characters are still reeling from the grief of Hiroshima. This is one way the story chooses to delve into loss, and in spite of its deep complexity, it is treated with care and therefore translated for the understanding of a three-year-old surprisingly well. Where Amélie understands sadness, being so young, she cannot grasp the darker, crueller forms grief can take when left to fester. These moments of vulnerable naivety which momentarily shed the fantasy of her omnipresence are some of its strongest. Also significant are those which inspire forgiveness and understanding – I (like Amélie) couldn't understand her bullying older brother until a scene near the end had me in tears.

This leads me to my biggest issue with the film, however: the family. Amélie's relationship with Nishio-san is touching and well-developed, as with her grandma. But I felt that her parents rise and falter in significance to the emotional weight of the story inconsistently. They ignore the teasing of her brother and appear to make little effort to understand the depths of their extraordinary child, leaving their housekeeper to carry much of the maternal weight. Never unkind or neglectful, but just there. I understand that the core of the story is between Amélie and the Nishio-san but her dynamic with her family could potentially be an interesting one if allowed some more attention.

The animation is lovely to look at, its soft edges give it a dreamy, hopeful quality. The eyes play a huge part in character design - Nishio-san’s soft ambers providing a steady, gentle counterpart to Amélie’s bright, intense green. Often blurring the line between imagination and reality, it is a well-executed interpretation of childhood wonder and perspective. Directors Mailys Vallade and Liane-Cho Han do an excellent job of pulling us in and out of Amélie’s consciousness. At moments she seems impossibly large; in others we see the world as she imagines it to be, where great ugly carps with her brother's face bear their mouths up at her, or flowers blossom at her will as she runs through them. Then, often in moments of poignant sincerity, she appears tiny in contrast with the wiser but inevitably more cynical adult inhabitants of her world.

Full of heart and sentimentality, Little Amélie or the Character of Rain understands the full scope of human emotion, and makes sense of it uniquely through the awe-inspired gaze of a three-year-old. Its empathetic storytelling and achingly emotive score made it an easy one to cry to, but the overall aftertaste is decidedly hopeful.