After the recent Blue Giant et The Most Valuable of Goodsa new animated film has piqued our curiosity. Totto-Chan, the little girl at the windowdirected by Shinnosuke Yakuwa, winner of the Paul Grimault prize at the last Annecy animated film festival, in June 2024, will delight young audiences, and will be the subject of a pleasant family outing.
A childhood story in 1940s Japan
The story follows Totto-Chan, a little girl as curious as she is dissipated, newly enrolled in Tomoe, an alternative, modernist and progressive school, reminiscent of Montessori, where she will be able to give free rein to her fantasy, her independence and her creativity. This, at a time when Japan, cherishing expansionist projects for the first time in its history, was involved alongside Germany in the Second World War.
Barely arriving at this school, whose classrooms are nothing more than converted train carriages, Totto-Chan becomes involved with Yasuaki, a boy suffering from poliomyelitis whom she will try to help as best she can.
Adapted from the best-selling 1981 autobiography of Tetsuko Kuroyanagi, an influential television personality, presenter, actress, essayist, and UNICEF Ambassador, Totto-Chan, the little girl at the window could have seen the light of day much earlier when we know that the original book is regularly studied in class. Its author, after many proposals from filmmakers, finally accepted this cartoon adaptation in order to better reach today's youth.
Growing through self-giving
A bit of a demagogue in its naive praise of modernist teaching, this story full of humor and playfulness could just as easily have been limited to the lightness of its beginnings if the filmmaker had only put the cursor on friendship. maintain the two comrades. A relationship marked by empathy, and even compassion, which goes as far as self-giving and self-sacrifice. Thus, over the years, and as the global conflict progresses, the story gains in depth, maturity and gravity, like its characters…
-More aware than his classmates of the finitude of existence, young Yasuaki never falls completely into carelessness and finds refuge in himself, in literature, when the others carry out their physical activities in the courtyard. Through contact with him, Totto-Chan will be able to take responsibility, come out of himself a little and grow.
Rather conventional but far from being as cutesy as the trailer suggests, Shinnosuke Yakuwa's film benefits from an overall classic but effective animation, with shimmering and spring colors. Very beautiful visually, Totto-Chan, the little girl in the window has not usurped its award at the Annecy Festival.
3 stars out of 5
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