"The Girl Who Leapt Through Time", a little masterpiece by Mamoru Hosoda, revolves around Makoto, a seventeen year old girl who spends her days lounging with Chiaki and Kosuke, her two best friends. Early in the film, Makoto discovered how to leap backward in time. Hosoda uses this newfound ability as a metaphor for the anxieties and dilemmas teenagers habitually face and seek to avoid.
And so we watch as Makoto uses her powers to dodge responsibilities and glide through life. This, of course, eventually leads to unintended drawbacks. Pretty soon Makoto is setting off chain-reactions which demand her full attention. Her little temporal jaunts then make an unintended shift; they become a means of confronting adulthood rather than a means of prolonging adolescence.
"Time waits for no one," a sign reads. Hosoda's film itself finds teenagers and adults facing a daunting smörgåsbord of choices and decisions. What's the right choice? What if I make a mistake? If time can't be reversed, how can I undo any potential future "errors"? If we have little control, why choose at all? Why not stay protectively cocooned in infancy? Or bed!
Eventually it is learnt that Chiaki is himself a time traveller. He's a kid from the future, running from his own problems and desperate for solutions. Specifically, he's in search of a painting. This painting, which depicts a young woman who radiates calmness amidst swirling chaos, becomes the film's metaphor for a kind of mental or philosophical state which Hosoda advocates: serenity and wisdom in the face of turmoil. Repeated cutaway shots to a cloud cluster, huge, tranquil and looming almost preternaturally over a canvas of confusion, epitomises this state of mind. It is also hinted that Makoto's aunt, a woman who works in an art gallery and restores paintings, is herself Makoto in or from the future (the film's source material makes it clear that they aren't the same character). She works alongside a painting which Makoto will one day preserve, the very painting which will hopefully help Chiaki find peace and strength within his own, original time-line.
Ignoring the film's temporal shenanigans, and its fetish-like obsession with ultra short skirts, "The Girl Who Leapt Through Time" works well as a romantic drama. When our cast are not cutting their way through much sexual tension, they're goofing off, playing baseball or trying to reconcile both long term planning and the unexpected whims of the heart. The film ends with Makoto promising to meet Chiaki in the future. Hosoda's bittersweet theme song suggests that this liaison never occurs.
8.5/10 - See Hosoda's "Summer Wars".
And so we watch as Makoto uses her powers to dodge responsibilities and glide through life. This, of course, eventually leads to unintended drawbacks. Pretty soon Makoto is setting off chain-reactions which demand her full attention. Her little temporal jaunts then make an unintended shift; they become a means of confronting adulthood rather than a means of prolonging adolescence.
"Time waits for no one," a sign reads. Hosoda's film itself finds teenagers and adults facing a daunting smörgåsbord of choices and decisions. What's the right choice? What if I make a mistake? If time can't be reversed, how can I undo any potential future "errors"? If we have little control, why choose at all? Why not stay protectively cocooned in infancy? Or bed!
Eventually it is learnt that Chiaki is himself a time traveller. He's a kid from the future, running from his own problems and desperate for solutions. Specifically, he's in search of a painting. This painting, which depicts a young woman who radiates calmness amidst swirling chaos, becomes the film's metaphor for a kind of mental or philosophical state which Hosoda advocates: serenity and wisdom in the face of turmoil. Repeated cutaway shots to a cloud cluster, huge, tranquil and looming almost preternaturally over a canvas of confusion, epitomises this state of mind. It is also hinted that Makoto's aunt, a woman who works in an art gallery and restores paintings, is herself Makoto in or from the future (the film's source material makes it clear that they aren't the same character). She works alongside a painting which Makoto will one day preserve, the very painting which will hopefully help Chiaki find peace and strength within his own, original time-line.
Ignoring the film's temporal shenanigans, and its fetish-like obsession with ultra short skirts, "The Girl Who Leapt Through Time" works well as a romantic drama. When our cast are not cutting their way through much sexual tension, they're goofing off, playing baseball or trying to reconcile both long term planning and the unexpected whims of the heart. The film ends with Makoto promising to meet Chiaki in the future. Hosoda's bittersweet theme song suggests that this liaison never occurs.
8.5/10 - See Hosoda's "Summer Wars".