Little Amélie or the Character of Rain

Sometimes, an Oscar nomination is almost as good as a win. Little Amélie may have scant hope of beating the mighty K-Pop Demon Hunters to Best Animated Feature, but its nod puts some deserved attention on a sweet and thought-provoking movie. 

It begins with the birth of God. Or at least, that’s how one newborn sees it. When Amélie emerges into the world, her parents are told she’s ‘a vegetable’. Seemingly incapable of movement or speech, she stares fixedly ahead, absorbing everything around her. With her family orbiting around her, she believes she’s the centre of the universe. 

At the age of two, Amélie is sparked into animation by two events: an earthquake that hits her family’s home in Japan, and a taste of white chocolate. She’s awoken simultaneously to life’s many pleasures and the constant spectre of death and destruction. Both will inform her understanding of the world in her earliest years. She’ll look death squarely in the face several times.

Adapting a memoir by Amélie Nothomb, debut feature directors Maïlys Vallade and Liane-Cho Han do a beautiful job of conveying the overwhelming feeling of being brand new. The animation initially looks like something produced on an early Nintendo console, but what it lacks in finesse it more than makes up for in feeling. It makes sense of how a small child sees the world, saturated and magical but not yet subtly detailed. 

A trip into a small girl’s life that leaves you with plenty of big things to ponder

It works perfectly pleasantly as a simple account of one’s toddling years, when everything is a revelation, but Amélie starts to show darker layers. The girl’s family may live in Japan, but they’re Belgian, and some of their neighbours still harbour resentments from World War II. Scenes of Amélie learning that the world can act against you based on who you are, not what you’ve done, are told in quite broad strokes but the message certainly lands. 

At just 75 minutes, it could have afforded more time to let its themes steep – scenes involving an aggrieved neighbour are effective but feel a little rushed to their conclusion – but even so, this short trip into a small girl’s life leaves you with plenty of big things to ponder.

In UK and Ireland cinemas Fri Feb 13.