Aka - The Case of Hana and Alice
Some of Shunji Iwai's films can be so delicate and warm that you feel you
have soaked in a bath for hours but none more so then the 2004 movie Hana
and Alice. It was a wonderful film about teenage female friendship that stealthily
burrows deep inside. Magical moments that stick with you. The two characters
are played by Anne Suzuki and Yu Aoi who were at the time two very popular
young actresses. Something must have drawn Shunji back to these characters
because eleven years later he returns to them in this animated prequel that
explores how that friendship came about and it is equally sweet, funny and
toasty comforting. Not only that but the two actresses return as well. The
animation was created with rotoscope - meaning that the real actors were
used and then the film processed through rotoscope which turns them
into animation. The same technique was used in the Spielberg Tin Tin film.
This allows of course for our two actresses eleven years older to be fourteen
years old's.
It is a lovely story that touches on a lot of elements in a teenagers life
- Tetsuko - later to be nicknamed Alice (Yu Aoi) - has moved to a new town
because of her parents divorce and she has transferred to a new school. Her
mother is a bit of a flirty ditz and Alice finds herself being ignored or
isolated by the other students and she has no idea why. It is more than just
a new student being hazed - it has to do with rumors of a murder in which
the victim sat at her desk, The desk had a circle of protection built around
it in a ceremony and she unknowingly broke it. An exorcism has to be performed.
The rumor is that the victim was Judas and he had four wives - one of whom
poisoned him.
Alice decides to get to the bottom of this and enlists her next door neighbor
Hana (Anne Suzuki) who has become a shut in. The two of them make a terrible
detective team with Alice following the wrong man and Hana being generally
useless. But this isn't really the point of the film - it is the friendship
that develops between the two girls that is the heart of it. In their small
adventure of snooping and missing the last train and Alice thinking Hana
is being dragged under a truck a bond is created that is quick but deep.
They connect like two pieces of a puzzle looking for one another.
I admittedly missed seeing the real actresses - I think Yu Aoi is magical
and Suzuki is great fun - but this was the best that could be done all those
years later - except a sequel which would have been fine for me. There are
a numbers of scenes that don't contribute to the so-called plot but they
add a layer of humanity - in particular Alice meeting up with the man that
she follows by mistake. As she sits with him on the bench this feeling between
her youth and his advancing age is rather wonderful. And her scene in ballet
class - which takes on a much bigger role in Hana and Alice - brings back
a fond memory of that film when Alice dances alone..
