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Rating: There are few certainties in life, in fact, you could almost say there are none at all. As far as I'm concerned, one of these few certainties is that if you love cinema, you must also love Studio Ghibli (and for heaven's sake, please pronounce it "Gibli", I beg you), from my point of view the best animation studio alongside Pixar (no offense to Disney lovers).
Since its founding, it has produced over twenty animated feature films. And it has almost never missed a beat. Usually, the name Ghibli is associated with Hayao Miyazaki (director of many masterpieces from the studio, such as Howl's Moving Castle, Spirited Away, or Princess Mononoke). But today I don't want to talk about a film by the master but about another, less famous, director of the studio: Tonomi Mochizuki, who has always been dedicated to films for television. The subject of today's review, Ocean Waves, is no exception: released in 1993 for Japanese television, it has only recently made it to Italy.
Normally, Studio Ghibli films have settings and plots oriented towards fantasy (the aforementioned Spirited Away) or, at least, with elements far from realism (Porco Rosso). Mochizuki, however, decided, together with the screenwriter Saeko Himuro, to bring to the screen a story rooted in reality: no fantastic characters, no monsters, no supernatural entities. All the characters are human, and so are their actions. The story tells of a love triangle, two friends (Taku Morisaki, the protagonist, and Yutaka Matsuno, his best friend) who fall in love with the same girl, Rikako Muto, the new arrival at their school, who struggles to integrate, especially with her classmates. The plot, therefore, is not the most original, not much different from classic teen movies. What is original, however, is the structure of the film: usually, teen movies have a very linear, not too complicated narration. Ocean Waves, however, uses a lot of flashbacks, with different timelines intertwining, yet remaining perfectly comprehensible. It is also interesting how Mochizuki decided to render the transition from one timeline to another: when the plot unfolds in the present and needs to move to a past moment, the flashback scene begins in a small box in the center of the frame, while the rest is completely white, and within a few seconds, it expands, cutting to a different shot, then occupying the entire frame, as if the flashback were at the other end of a tunnel and we were crossing it to reach the past. Unfortunately, the short duration of the film (a little over seventy minutes), does not allow for a very in-depth development of the characters and the story: in this way, a single viewing is not enough to fully absorb this work from the dream studio.
Needless to say, it is a film far from the (almost) perfection achieved by the Master's films, but the visual impact of the images that Mochizuki offers us is truly excellent, the light of his drawings is delicate and elegant. Even though the animation is not very fluid (often you can count the individual frames with the naked eye), it still manages to move the viewer, who becomes involved in the characters' stories because what we see is what everyone, sooner or later, experiences: who has never been in love? Who has never argued over love? One thing that can often be seen in animated films, in particular, is that the characters do not have reactions recognizable in real-life people: the characters by Taeko Himuro, however, are perfectly human, a mirror of the real world.
The directorial quality is far from that of the studio's masterpieces (among which I recently added The Red Turtle, by Michael Dudok de Wit, which I might review), yet some images are unforgettable, thanks to a use of light and colors that are typical of Japanese animation, especially those that feature the environment as a protagonist: in particular, the rendering of the sky is truly spectacular and moving, especially if you have a passion for clouds like I do (so much so that I really enjoy photographing them... I know, I have a bit of a problem).
Highly recommended for those already familiar with Studio Ghibli: if someone has never seen a film from this studio, I certainly wouldn't recommend this one to start with.
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