Whisper of the Heart review – Studio Ghibli deep cut is pep talk on how to live the artistic life

While 2013’s The Wind Rises and 2023’s The Boy and the Heron saw Hayao Miyazaki break his wizard’s staff, artistically speaking, this lesser-known Studio Ghibli cut from 1995, based on his screenplay, shows he was dwelling on creative responsibilities from early on. Featuring a typical Ghibli protagonist on the brink of adulthood – aspiring schoolkid writer Shizuku (voiced by Yōko Honna) – this teen romance doubles up as an earnest pep talk on how to commit to the artistic life. It’s not quite as sophisticated, though, in its understanding of the interplay between imagination and reality as Miyazaki’s later masterpieces.

It also features highly inventive use of that 2010s soundtrack favourite: John Denver’s Take Me Home, Country Roads. Shizuku shows off her fledgling penmanship for a school performance of the song devising hilarious Japanese lyrics that satirise Tokyo’s “concrete roads”. But while her writing shows promise, her love life remains in the fantasy realm. Mainlining library books, she realises that the same name, Seiji Amasawa, keeps appearing on the lists of previous borrowers. It feels like fate is pointing her towards a soulmate – especially when a curmudgeonly cat leads her “like in a story” to an intriguing curio shop near the library.

Whisper of the Heart is the sole directorial credit for Ghibli stalwart Yoshifumi Kondō, who died shortly afterwards, and the film remains tethered to realism, flirting with but never quite dispatching Shizuku to some otherworldly Kansas. In fact, it’s actively wary of overinvesting in imagination; even as she pushes her friend Yūko (Maiko Yoshiyama) towards making a choice between two boys, she struggles with her own storybook expectations of romance. Seiji (Issey Takahashi) turns out to be the grandson of the antique shop’s owner, where she is transfixed by a dapper cat figurine. But the reverie crumbles when the lad announces he intends to go to Cremona in Italy to train as a violin-maker.

Impressed by his resolve, Shizuku commits to writing a novel, inspired by the figurine. Perhaps limited by the manga source material, Kondō and Miyazaki don’t fully align the shojo love complications with the aspiring artist saga. Instead of detailing how (in her case) creativity is a direct reaction to reality’s shortcomings, they prefer the straight motivational strategy. Talking up discipline, artists as lone-gun nonconformists and, above all, the need to accept imperfections of “rough gems” en route, the film feels like a series of notes to self. With the trademark Ghibli charm and airy optimism in almost every frame, it’s something more than a rough gem but, lacking the symphonic flow of Spirited Away et al, not quite polished to sparkling.