![]() ![]() Orphaned at a young age, Anna is an unusually prickly heroine who derides her anxious foster mother (“She whines like a goat!”) and simmers with self-loathing. Its emphasis on the richness of nature and the fortitude of young girls, though, remains intact as Anna, an asthmatic 12-year-old, is sent to live with relatives at the seaside. Possibly the last feature of its kind from the much-lauded Japanese animation house Studio Ghibli (whose founders, Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata, recently announced their retirement), “Marnie” is psychologically darker and less fantastical than most of the studio’s previous output. Others, however, could experience the story’s sweetly supernatural drift as a veil for gnarlier intimations of child abuse, sexual awakening, ethnic confusion and even mental illness. Robinson will seem a simple tale of friendship found and unhappiness banished. To the tinies, this gorgeously animated adaptation of a 1967 young-adult novel by the British author Joan G. Suggestion and subtext jostle for attention, and the extent to which they intrude will depend mainly on the age of the viewer. Beneath its calm, exquisitely detailed surface, “ When Marnie Was There” bubbles with half-formed ideas and undeveloped themes. ![]()
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