“You’re my precious person,” Marnie tells Anna. The two young people become fast friends, exchanging confidences and stories about their mutual loneliness. Pulled there almost by an unknown force, Anna rows out to the house one evening, and there she meets Marnie (Kiernan Shipka/Katsumi Arimura), a girl her own age with stunning blond hair whom she has previously dreamed about. She’s to board with the Oiwas, relatives of her foster mother, a boisterous, jolly couple who don’t take things too seriously.Ī gifted but shy artist, Anna is looking for a place to sketch when she stumbles on an abandoned mansion set on a marsh, a place that she feels drawn to even though locals say it has a reputation for being haunted.īecause of the house’s location on the marsh, the effect of the tides means it’s accessible only at certain times. Then Anna’s chronic asthma becomes worse, and she is sent from urban Sapporo, where she lives, to recuperate in rural Hokkaido. Even Anna’s foster mother worries about this, talking about how she always has “an ordinary face,” one that doesn’t show emotions. As voiced by Hailee Steinfeld in the dubbed English version and Sara Takatsuki in the subtitled Japanese, Anna always feels outside of the magical circle of friendship other girls share. “Marnie” starts with a 12-year-old girl named Anna Sasaki dealing with sadness.

It deals with friendship, loneliness, abandonment and forgiveness, and though its curious narrative arc means you’re never sure exactly where it’s going, the film works up a considerable emotional charge by the end. Transposed from rural Britain to the northernmost Japanese island of Hokkaido, “Marnie” is part YA coming of age tale and part ghost story.

Ghibli when marnie was there