Wisp of a Thing
Aoi Hiiragi’s popular romantic manga gets another kick at the can in its most callow iteration yet. Stop. Please.
WHisper of the Heart
Director: Yuichiro Hirakawa • Writer: Yuichiro Hirakawa, based on the manga by Aoi Hiiragi
Starring: Nana Seino, Tori Matsuzaka, Rio Uchida, Yuki Yamada, Runa Yasuhara, Tsubasa Nakagawa, Sara Sumitomo, Towa Araki, Kei Tanaka, Masaomi Kondo, Marika Matsumoto, Keisuke Nakata, Takuma Otoo
Japan • 1hr 54mins
Opens Hong Kong February 16 • I
Grade: C+
I legit cannot take much more soft-focus, sun-dappled, middle school nostalgia anchored by one half of a duo embroiled in a low-simmering, super-chaste romance at some point warbling a middle school anthem to each other. Oh, and let’s not forget there will, for some damned reason, always be classical music performance and a cat involved. Aiyah, the sheer volume of these juvenile “romances” coming out of Japan these days is truly disturbing. What the hell is going on? It wouldn’t be so bad if any of them delved into real issues – gender inequality, Japan’s shifting demographics, uncertainty about the future, anything – but they don’t, instead focusing on the same forced sunniness of a Peter Pan-type womanchild (innovation!) who sucks at life but finds happiness with some dude. Enough.
The perpetrator of the crime this time is Yuichiro Hirakawa’s Whisper of the Heart | 耳をすませば, a live action (of course) remake of Studio Ghibli’s 1995 animated feature (naturally) by Yoshifumi Kondo, itself based on Aoi Hiiragi’s bestselling 1989 manga (what else?). Whatever worked in Hirakawa’s film – notably penned by Hayao Miyazaki – is gone; whatever charms it had have been thoroughly excised. Mostly because the characters in that film were… checks notes… middle schoolers, and the sugary, juvenile fantasy was fitting. That same sugary, juvenile fantasy when applied to so-called adults will have you checking out the back of your own head, your eyes will be rolling that hard.
See? Sun dappled
Whisper of the Heart starts with 14-ish Shizuku Tsukishima (Runa Yasuhara) in middle school and hooked on YA fantasy literature. One day she notices that another student, Seiji Amasawa (Tsubasa Nakagawa), has been checking the same books out of the library that she has, so you know what that means. True love! Then she follows a cat (there it is) to an antique shop, which just so happens to be owned by Seiji’s grandfather Shiro (Masaomi Kono), and where she and Seiji finally meet cute. Also wrapped in this nonsense are Shizuku’s best pals, Yuko Harada (Sara Sumitomo) and the third side of a would-be love triangle, Tatsuya Sugimura (Towa Araki), that never is. As kids Shizuku and Seiji vow they’re going to chase their dreams – him to play the cello, her to be a writer – and then get married. Or something.
In between the gauzy school days we live in the present, 10 years on when Yuko (Rio Uchida) and Tatsuya (Yuki Yamada) are engaged, Shizuku (Nana Seino, Tokyo Tribe) is working at a small publishing company as a (crap) editor and Seiji (Tori Matsuzaka, Wandering) is living in Rome, cello-ing it up and getting eye-fucked by an Aggressive Foreign Woman. Shizuku hits a professional and creative wall when the kid-lit writer she edits, Sonomura (Kei Tanaka), dumps her, while Seiji seems to be flourishing. The solution? Go to Italy and see him. How this is supposed to help is beyond me.
This is romance as facile and puerile as it can be made, with zero in the way of nuance or conflict – unless you count the requisite “Oh no, he’s hugging another woman! It’s over!” moment (this in Europe, where kissing on both cheeks is as common as a slight bow is in Japan). Seino ensure Shizuku’s ceaseless chirpiness is matched only by her guilelessness, with Matsuzaka conflating stoic and expressionless with driven and emotinally guarded, barely altering tack, at least until Seiji and Shizuku break into an impromptu homebound performance of “Please Give Me Wings” – which is of course interrupted by the Aggressive Foreign Woman. More insulting is that the song had significantly more meaning in ’95 with the eco-conscious Miyazaki behind it.
Sure, facile and puerile romance has its place, and it was sweetly engaging in Kondo’s anime, where the fantasy and borderline magical realism fit right in. But by positing “adult” (those quotes are there for a reason) versions of Shizuku and Seiji and toggling between the warm, fuzzy images of past and crisp, slick ones in the present, Whisper of the Heart goes right off a puppy love cliff into an abyss of predictable melodrama, with the increasingly flustered Shizuku fighting tears and trying to find herself. Let’s call it: Shizuku is the Japanese version of Hollywood’s since-abandoned (mostly) Manic Pixie Dream Girl. If we’re lucky the Shizukus of the cinema will fade into oblivion with her. — DEK