LITTLE AMÉLIE OR THE CHARACTER OF RAIN

Little Amelie or the Character of Rain, GKIDS

Follow on Facebook | Follow on Twitter | Become a Patron

Review by Mark Dujsik | October 30, 2025

There's a time in our lives we cannot remember. Our brains aren't able or ready to do so, basically, and the girl at the center of Little Amélie or the Character of Rain thinks of herself as a god—or even one of the capital-G variety—during that period. From her perspective, the world revolved around her, which is true of an infant in a loving household, and this meant she was all-powerful, even though, in her absence of memory, her existence was essentially doing a whole lot of nothing.

This animated film, adapted from a novel by Amélie Nothomb, is fascinating in the way it communicates the main character's arrival into and constantly evolving self-awareness. Amélie, voiced by Loïse Charpentier (as well as Emmylou Homs), exists in a literal bubble for the first two years and few months of her life—seeing everything around her but being physically incapable of doing anything. In a way, this introduction almost exists in the realm of fantasy, because the infant cannot move, make sound, or, apparently, even eat.

This is, of course, an impossibility in the real world. However, consider the character's state from her own perspective, which is to say a point of view that cannot recall any of this time. She knows she existed. She had to have, after all, but that gap of memory for Amélie is filled with this notion of being both powerful beyond all comprehension and vulnerable in a way that she also cannot comprehend.

It's kind of a lovely thought, really, and the film, co-written and directed by Maïlys Vallade and Liane-Cho Han, has several beautiful ideas and moments within it. The story proper begins with Amélie breaking free of her isolating bubble in a burst of energy that seems to cause or is triggered by an earthquake. From her point of view, she very well might have caused the tremor, being a god with so much potential energy waiting to be unleashed upon the world, but from a more objective perspective, isn't it possible that the earthquake will simply become Amélie's earliest memory?

There's a mysterious quality to the entire narrative, which begins by trying to imagine a mind before the advent of its memory and proceeds to attempt to communicate how a child learns about the world. Considering how short and limited the film itself is, it is quite ambitious in its underlying concerns.

The story is very simple. We watch Amélie over the course of about a year, from the time she becomes self-aware to a few months after her third birthday. Her parents, Patrick (voice of Marc Arnaud) and Danièle (voice of Laetitia Coryn), are Belgian citizens living in Japan circa the late 1960s, because he is a diplomat working his homeland's embassy in the country. The couple has two older children, Juliette (voice of Haylee Issembourg) and André (voice of Isaac Schoumsky), who are as shocked as their parents when Amélie starts moving, observing, and speaking. It's no surprise to us, since we have had insider's view of how much has been going on inside the girl's mind that entire time.

One person who isn't surprised, though, is Amélie's paternal grandmother Claude (voice of Cathy Cerdà), who has come from Belgium to help her family. As soon as her youngest granddaughter starts speaking, the grandmother talks to the little girl as if she knows the child is more aware than the rest of the family suspects. Claude also points Amélie's parents in the direction of a young local woman named Nishio (voice of Victoria Grosbois), who becomes the girl's unofficial nanny, closest confidant, and way to understand some of the finer points of Japanese culture and history.

All of this is to say, of course, that there's much of a plot here. Amélie exists as somewhat of an outsider among the rest of her family (since they have lives separately and together that were formed well-before the girl's arrival), spends time with her adult friend, and has many questions to ask about life, death, the world, and why people behave the way they do. Nishio has some answers, especially when it comes to death and her own experiences with it, since she was a survivor of bombings in Japan during World War II.

Her aunt and the family's landlord Kashima (voice of Yumi Fujimori) knows of that, too, but she has become hardened, resentful, and prejudiced against this family. One of the more poignant concepts here is how Amélie makes that connection of wartime experience between the niece and aunt, understanding why Kashima feels the way she does entirely on her own. Another empathetic moment comes when, after spending a day on the beach with her own family, Amélie returns with a jar filled with the air from the place, because Nishio told the girl one of her favorite memories is of spending a day there with her own family.

The subtle power of this film is in its little moments, revealing a lot of insight into the mind of a child who perceives everything and understands more than the adults around her give her credit. Little Amélie or the Character of Rain is also, in a period when the medium seems more interested in technological advances, an animated film that is hand-drawn and features a unique style—one that combines some of the broad characteristics of Japanese animation, especially in the faces of the characters, with colorful, lineless strokes of Impressionism. It is a lovely film in both the story it's telling and how these artists tell it.

Back to Home

Buy Related Products