NYICFF Review: Totto-chan revels in childhood joys as tragedy looms

Totto-Chan: The Little Girl at the Window, based on Japanese television personality Tetsuko Kuroyanagi's memoir, opens by telling viewers that they're about to watch a true story about an elementary schooler in the years before World War II. It immediately puts you into a certain headspace, setting the expectation for something solemn, serious, sad. For me, I found myself wondering if I was about to watch something akin to In This Corner of the World (a favorite of mine). My tissue box was at the ready.

It was needed, but this movie is much more than an emotional knockout. Indeed, there's a vibrant joy at the core of this story, about a little girl finding her place in the world alongside good friends, loving parents, and supportive educators. The opening words create a sense of dramatic irony that weighs heavy, but doesn't overpower the moments of creativity, passion, and curiosity that marked and defined Totto-chan's childhood (and, I imagine, the rest of her life).

It can be hard to get kids right on screen. If you're doing a live-action thing, child actors can easily be too precocious, studied, stiff. Or veer more into the saccharine. In any medium, it's easy to over- or underwrite child characters. It's hard, as an adult, to remember what it's like to be a kid, what it feels like inside a child's brain, the way those neurons fire and thoughts ricochet and strange links are made. Often, though, Japanese animation is where I see kids brought to life in a way that feels real, accurate, lived-in. Perhaps no movie feels truer to the experience of childhood than My Neighbor Totoro -- Satsuki and (especially) Mei feel like actual kids transposed on the screen, wild and silly and excitable and curious. It's special, rare.

Totto-Chan is one of the best I've seen since, in that regard. We're introduced to her and immediately love her as she asks the ticket-taker at the train station a bunch of questions and declares that she wants to work there someday. She's almost vibrating with energy, bright and bubbly and bold. We soon learn that she's a problem at school, too easily distracted, loud, interruptive. 

So she's brought by her mother to a progressive school -- or as the local gang of bullies call it, the "weird school" -- Tomoe Academy, where they do things a bit differently. Totto-chan meets Principal Kobayashi, and you immediately know this is a good one. He lets Totto-chan talk about everything she wants, and she wants to talk about a lot! The snippets of their conversation are hilarious, weird, and so true to kids. I love the way kids' minds work, the random stuff they say. My mom was a kindergarten teacher, and I always loved visiting her classroom to see what random things I would hear. That's all present here, and it's so fun to watch.

The focus on Tomoe Academy reveals one of the film's great strengths, and I think missions. It's an ode to educators, the ones who care so much and try so hard. Who pay attention to each student on an individual level and want to reach every single one. Who take it hard when they mess up, and want to make it right. This is really driven home in Koboyashi's final scenes, which look to a future of shaping more young minds.

But the main thrust of the movie, one that happens despite the school staff's best efforts, is the loss of innocence. This is expected, what with that dramatic irony hanging over our heads the whole time. But there were moments where I sort of forgot where we were heading, because this movie really revels in the joys of childhood: the games, the discovery, the wide-eyed-ness of learning about the world. The characters, especially the kids, have a doll-like quality to their faces: large glassy eyes, rosy cheeks, plump pink lips. (Some of the kids look a little scary, it's true, but mostly they're very cute.) It enhances the sense of their innocence, their excitement, their playfulness. And a few scenes break into other animation styles, flights of imagination that really pop with color and movement and style -- this is a gorgeous movie.

The loss of innocence does, of course, come. Totto-chan befriends a boy in class named Yasauki who has polio. Being a kid, she bluntly asks him why he walks with a limp, and that straightforwardness endears her to him a bit, allowing them to grow closer. She treats him like any other kid, pushing him to do things that seem scary, difficult, or even impossible due to the limitations of his body. Their friendship is so sweet, and I won't say anything more about it, but, yes, I shed tears for them, and what they meant to each other.

There's a second layer to the loss, as Japan goes to war against the US and England. Suddenly, there's a push to turn away from Western ways, whether that's how women dress and do their hair, or the words Totto-chan uses to address her parents. In one scene, Totto-chan and Yasauki walk through the rain-drenched streets, wishing they had food, and start singing a silly song, only to be reprimanded by a man passing by. In wartime, there's no place for such childish behavior, no place for that kind of unfiltered goofiness. 

But Totto-chan never loses herself, never loses that spark that makes her such a magnetic force to the people around her, and -- at Tomoe, at least -- a pleasure to have in class. The film starts in 1940 and ends in 1945, so we see her grow up quite a bit, and she remains such a special, easy-to-love girl. It speaks to the resilience of children, even when facing so much tragedy on levels both personal and more widespread. It gave me a break from the cognitive dissonance I had watching -- "this is such a fun movie, but I just know something bad is coming for these kids" -- to see her come out on the other side, seemingly largely unscathed.

The cherry on top? Tetsuko Kuroyanagi herself provides narration for the film (I think just at the end?), a beautiful choice that really brings it all home. 

I'm not sure what the plan is regarding this movie coming to the US. It opened in Japan in December 2023 (and is already on Netflix there), but the fact that it's playing at NYICFF gives me hope that it'll have a proper opening here soon. I sure hope so, because this is a beautiful movie I'd love to share.

Totto-Chan: The Little Girl at the Window is having its North American premiere at NYICFF on Saturday, March 1 at 5:00pm. It shows again on Saturday, March 15 at 5:45pm.