Animafest Zagreb Review: Samurai Ballerina is graceful and gracious
Depending on the day, if you ask me what my favorite movie of all time is, there's a decent chance I'll say Yoshifumi KondÅ's gentle masterpiece Whisper of the Heart . (There's a reason it's the banner on this blog.) I felt some of that movie's DNA in Samurai Ballerina -L'etoile de Paris en fleur- , which is just about the highest compliment I can give a movie. While it didn't worm its way into my heart the way that Ghibli classic did, it still offered a sweet and supremely kindhearted story that goes to some unexpected places. Samurai Ballerina subverted an expectation I had in a way that I found puzzling at first, but that proved to be thematically relevant, maybe even enriching. The film positions us at the beginning with Fujiko, a young girl attending a cultural event where she sees ballet for the first time. It's lighting her up creatively -- she's an artist, and she's imagining the drawings and paintings she might do of these ballerina...
