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Movies & TV Movies & TV Reviews

From Up On Poppy Hill

FROM UP ON POPPY HILL (Goro Miyazaki). 91 minutes. Subtitled and dubbed versions. Opens Friday (March 22) at TIFF Bell Lightbox. See listings. Rating: NNNN


From Up On Poppy Hill, the top-grossing 2011 film released in Japan, is co-written by legendary Studio Ghibli co-founder and director Hayao Miyazaki and directed by his son Goro. That’s appropriate for an atmospheric, poignant movie about passing the torch from one generation to the next.

It’s the early 1960s in Tokyo, and as the city readies itself for the 1964 Olympics, teenage student Umi is busy running her family’s home. Her mom’s away in the U.S., and her father, a naval officer, disappeared during the Korean War, so Umi tends to her siblings, grandmother and their boarders alone. Every morning she raises flags so boats on the sea below (and maybe someone who knew her father?) will see her greeting.

And then she meets Shun, a charismatic student who runs the school’s newspaper in a dilapidated old building. Because the historic venue – which also houses the school’s other male-run clubs – is being threatened with demolition, Umi and her boy-crazy friends join a massive cleanup to help save it. Meanwhile, Umi and Shun discover they’ve got a lot in common.

Despite a touch of melodrama in the film’s final reel, the story is absorbing, and the most memorable moments rely on silence and restraint. There are also fascinating glimpses of both the changing role of women and the industrialization that would soon make Japan a major economic power.

Satoshi Takebe’s jaunty score adds lots of charm, the voices (the film’s being screened in dubbed and subtitled versions) are characterful, and the animation is gorgeous, although Western viewers might find it distracting that the movie’s big corporate tycoon looks a lot like Ronald Reagan.

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