A schoolgirl falls victim to an elaborate, targeted dating scam involving library books, cats and communal singing. Facing a terrible decision between her studies, her love and her career, can she make peace with herself before it’s too late?
It’s always good to see a positive portrayal of (male) library work. He wasn’t even wearing a cardigan!
Confession. I am a librarian in real life. I know, I know. It’s not really a profession, more an excuse not to have a profession, but still everyone loves librarians and secretly wants to be one, because, well, books are wonderful aren’t they? If only you knew. We still have performance appraisals. And meetings. And sales targets, deadlines, and more meetings. In organisations we’re treated as a luxury that raises no income and only appears on the wrong side of the balance sheet. Always the first department in the firing line. Because we only do books, don’t we…? Suffice to say that if you want to be wealthy or work with books, never become a librarian. I would like to point out that the basic plot of this film raises red flags in an age of GDPR enforcement and reader history privacy. It feels like it’s from another world; anachronistic, nostalgic even when it was made. Books and libraries may feel safe and wonderful and romantic, but they’re underfunded, public-facing, multi-tools that are constantly under attack. Have fun with your career choices.
Perhaps that’s why I can’t help feeling that this film has an unbearable lack of cynicism about its story. Writing is seen as a wonderfully romantic life choice, and as long as the protagonist works hard and is passionate, she will succeed. Well, maybe if she’d chosen technical writing and instead of fantastical accounts of cats, written a clear concise guide to fixing the photocopier… The alternative version of ‘Country Roads’ used in the film had a much greater degree of cynicism regarding nostalgia than the film did about it’s own nostalgic view of what it takes to succeed.
OK. That’s my personal disconnection with the film out of the way. Lets look at the positives. This feels like a modern-day Bronte novel for teenage girls, coming-of-age in a hard and unforgiving system that expects them to follow specified pathways in life. That’s a rarity and it should be treasured. It’s a positive, heart-warming, juggling of romance, career and duty to forge a new path. The animation is great, especially on attention to detail given to the urban interiors. The main family home was cluttered and disorganised, but the look of it alone told so much about the warmth and life of the central family.
If I had to pick one adjective to describe the film it would be warm. Heart-warming. A warm bath on a rainy day. One to watch when the world is full of edges. It puts an overwhelmed and confused girl’s agency to the forefront and asserts that she can thrive and create her own special place in it. And more than that, there’s help out there, even if you can’t see it. I wish this was so much more. It’s doing the right thing, but I’m left feeling unsatisfied. Hmmm.
A good-looking man drifts through life buoyed by his charm and driven to avoid his big fear: Rejection. Whenever he senses its stealthy approach, he ensures he strikes first, leaving his friends and the authorities to clear up his mess. Inevitably his journey leads down a very long road to his ultimate nemesis. Will he prevail?
The first of a loose trilogy in which WKW indulges his passion for colonial influences on fashion and society in 20th Century China. Decadence, decline and the death of the family. But it looks amazing. It’s a 19th century European saga of cold German passion, opulent Italian classicism and inevitable Russian tragedy. With lots and lots of smoking.
Another WKW obsession is thoroughly horrible male protagonists. Irresponsibility jostles with purposeless, boredom and barely concealed anger at women, the world and whoever is talking to them at any given moment. He likes them rather too much. Grown man-children, aka ‘playboys’, who end up being forgiven, being healed or given a romantic-sounding philosophical excuse involving single-use birds and a traumatic childhood. I’m starting to see the limits of his worldview through the nostalgic grime he paints with.
Speaking of which: Cinematography. The colours of a three-day old bruise. Once livid now fading. It’s not a surface you want to touch in case it still hurts, but it’s hard to resist.
Yes.
It still hurts.
There’s something insubstantial about the setting. As if this isn’t a film you’re watching, more a dream you’re remembering. With discomfort.
Picking at the scab of love again, trying to reveal the truth but never quite getting there. Trying to preserve the mystery when perhaps it’s not all that mysterious. It’s all attachment and hormones and going cold turkey on the latter when the guy-ropes of the former are severed. All done wonderfully obviously but tainted with an overtone of self-importance and satisfaction with its own insight. The overall mood of dissociation, time and place is great. It’s the motion through that world in terms of plot and character development that’s lacking. Great at ennui, disconnection and discontent, not so good at resolution, change or insight. He likes to wallow in a stagnant past. Icky. But I did love the Andy Lau/Maggie Cheung arc.
Verdict:
Whatever I choose, it’s inevitable some of you are going to be unhappy. With seven previous reviews, Days of Being Wild must be one of the most watched films currently in the bracket. It’s divided opinion. Whisper of the Heart has established more of a consensus in that it’s lesser Ghibli but it’s still Ghibli and it’s only one behind with six reviews. Do I plump for uncynical wholesomeness or uncynical weltschmerz?
The truth is I don’t want to put either of them through. Although they’re both good films, I’m finding both of them problematic. While Days of Being Wild indulges in a characters and stories that are troubling and recycled in numerous other offerings from the 80s and 90s, it does so with with Wong Kar-wais increasingly confident and rich style, capturing a 94-minute long mood magnificently. Even if it’s more of a painting than a film. Whisper of the Heart is a much rarer and more necessary film, but is let down by its refusal to make its world as harsh as it should be, even for a film from 1995 whose natural audience is teenage girls. It’s actually this dishonesty, that almost decided it for me. But I must defend the more essential of these two. Whisper of the Heart goes through by the skin of its teeth. Got to side with the librarians.