15/01/20

We missed this smash hit by Makoto Shinkai on its release in 2016, but tonight’s double bill at the Cameo – pairing Your Name with his latest release, Weathering With You – gives us the opportunity to find out what the fuss was all about.

And wow. Each critical superlative, every bit of box-office lucre, is completely merited. Shinkai is, indeed, a worthy successor to Hayao Miyazaki, recently retired head of Studio Ghibli. This is a beautiful animation.

Mitsuha (Mone Kamishiraishi) is a teenage girl, living in the remote rural village of Itomori. Mitsuha feels stifled by her strict father, and by the ancient rituals she is obliged to follow. She dreams of being ‘a boy in Tokyo,’ with the freedom to do what she wants in a bustling city.

And sometimes, it seems, dreams can come true, because Mitsuha wakes up one day in an unfamiliar room – and body. She’s switched places with Taki (Ryûnosuke Kamiki), and suddenly finds herself forced to negotiate the intricacies of a stranger’s life. Where is his school? Who are his friends? Mitsuha embraces the opportunity to hang out in café bars and flirt with Taki’s colleague, Ms Okudera (Masami Nagasawa), at his part-time restaurant job. She relishes the new experience.

Taki, meanwhile, is less enthusiastic about the change, although he can’t help enjoying playing with ‘his’ breasts, much to the outrage of Mitsuha’s younger sister, Yotsuha (Kanon Tani). Still, he goes along with it; what option does he have? And, before long, the teens have navigated a way through their intermittent body swaps, using their cell phones to log notes and reminders to keep things running (relatively) smoothly. I particularly like the way suspense is generated via a repeated motif where their lives almost collide.

So far, so seen-it-done-it-Freaky-Friday, but Shinkai’s movie has another layer, a deeper, more engaging heart, encompassing (without saying too much) fate, time travel and natural disaster. It’s compellingly told, with warmth and sincerity.

But it’s the animation that really makes this film. It’s breathtakingly gorgeous, with a clear delineation between the hard lines of the city and the sumptuous, lush countryside. At times photo-realistic, at others impressionistic, each frame is perfect, each hand-drawn image exquisitely realised.

A masterpiece.

5 stars

Susan Singfield