This is why we go to film festivals. Once in a while you get to see a movie that you probably would have missed if it weren't for film festivals, but has made your life just a little bit better. A movie that transforms you. A movie that makes your heart swell and your soul sing. A movie that makes you weep silent streams of bittersweet tears for a youthful version of yourself who felt that life was all about possibilities and less like an episode of The Office.
Okay, we're probably way over-selling it, but the animated Japanese flick, The Girl Who Leapt Through Time [site is in Japanese], is probably the best movie we've seen in a long long time. It played on St. Patrick's Day at the parade now a federally sanctioned occasion to flash boobies?)
"The Girl Who Leapt Through Time" is a winning story of adolescence with a little bit of magic thrown in. We were worried at first to see the animation girls wearing such scandalously short skirts and wondered if the movie was going to stray into the X-rated as many manga do. The characters are so richly drawn and the story is so engrossing that eventually we forgot about the porno-skirts and stopped wondering if the animators were going to throw in a Sharon-Stone-crossing-her-legs-in-the-Basic-Instinct moment. We saw a bunch of kids at the Castro, but we have to warn you that this probably isn't a "cartoon" for super little kids. There's none of that spastic Pixar/Disney energy. Take an older kid though, or anyone who's just a kid at heart.
The Girl Who Leapt Through Time plays on Thursday at the PFA in Berkeley.
