24/12/2025 - Maïlys Vallade and Liane-Cho Han’s acclaimed animation follows a three-year-old Belgian girl living in Japan in the late 1960s, showing the endearingly eccentric way she processes the world

Few aren’t delighted by Belgian white chocolate, but for two-year-old Amélie (voiced by Loïse Charpentier), her first sampling of it prompts a miracle, belatedly granting her a consciousness and interpersonal skills. Offered up by her kind visiting grandmother Claude, the first bite propels the child from her cot into a “power stance” familiar from anime cartoons, with radiant colours and animated motion lines all in a flurry. Such is the rococo, yet elegant, style of Little Amélie or the Character of Rain [+see also:
trailer
interview: Maïlys Vallade, Liane-Cho Han
film profile], co-directed by French animators Maïlys Vallade and Liane-Cho Han, which conjures the heart-bursting spirit of formative childhood experiences, if not their real-world truth. It premiered as a Cannes Film Festival Special Screening earlier this year, resulting in wide international exposure, with holiday theatrical releases scheduled in the Netherlands (on 25 December) and Italy (on 1 January) through Paradiso Filmed Entertainment and Lucky Red, respectively.

There’s a surfeit of realistic arthouse dramas exploring how pre-adolescent kids process the world, whether tracking an upbeat coming of age or a more tragic loss of innocence. Little Amélie… feels indebted to this tradition, while being shrewdly aware that bright-coloured, family-friendly animation is more optimum for the early-development years. Adapting a part-autobiographical novel for adults by Amélie Nothomb, it follows her namesake up to the age of three. She is the youngest child of a Belgian diplomat living in Japan in the late 1960s, and the movie gradually unveils what she learns and feels. Adults and children will find its aesthetic beauty appealing, and the storytelling more deliberate and subtle compared to other family fare, but my, it does not scrimp on sentimentality.

Amélie’s voice-over, deriving from a later point in her life as she looks back, helps orientate the story’s heavy magical-realist touches. From birth until two, the girl is at once a “god” (her own lofty description), impervious to others’ judgement and harm, and a “tube” (visualised as such) that can absorb and then secrete the matter of the universe; ironically, to her parents’ obvious concern, she appears outwardly to be in a vegetative state, unresponsive to any stimuli, let alone their care and love. After Grandma’s vital white chocolate intervention, she progresses from god to apparent mortal, and begins acting like someone typically of her age.

But beyond her aloof parents, and two older siblings prone to treating her quite cruelly, the film’s key secondary figure is Nishio-San (Victoria Grobois), the family’s housemaid hired by their landlord Kashima-San (who herself behaves with fear and suspicion around them). Nishio-San introduces Amélie to the wonders of the tranquil rivers and valleys bordering her secure family home and – more pertinently – to Japanese culture and history, allowing the film to meditate on how her family is clearly implicated in the country’s post-war settlement, with the trauma of the atomic bomb still barely resolved. This also doubles back with appropriate self-awareness on Vallade and Han’s own artistic choices, as Western directors (in spite of the latter’s Chinese heritage) at risk of exoticising and misrepresenting an oriental culture.

Many of the best kids’ and family films reference the upsetting context behind their foreground plots, so naturally, Little Amélie… gently proffers some harsher truths and morals alongside its infectious cuteness.

Little Amélie or the Character of Rain is a French production, staged by Maybe Movies, Ikki Films and Puffin Pictures. Gebeka International handles the world sales.