Wolf Children review – Mamoru Hosoda’s tender werewolf fable is a minor masterpiece

Childhood, single motherhood and the call of the wild converge in Hosoda’s most emotionally resonant film – a beautifully drawn tale of love, loss and letting goThe latest in the set of 4K Mamoru Hosoda rereleases might be his strongest work, a graceful and emotionally rich fable from 2012 that gathers in its arms themes of single motherhood, neighbourliness, ecological conservation and the meaning of adult independence. It’s indebted to My Neighbour Totoro in its setup: urbanite mum Hana (voiced by Aoi Miyazaki) brings her two werewolf children, Yuki (Momoka Ono as a child/Haru Kuroki as a teenager) and Ame (Amon Kabe/Yukito Nishii) to a beaten-up country house. While not quite matching the Miyazaki masterpiece’s complete storytelling economy, Hosoda achieves a rawer sense of wildness and elation by pitching his fantasy closer to young-adult realism.Hana has to raise her two transmogrifying toddlers alone after her lycanthrope beau (Takao Osawa), whom she first spies across a lecture hall, is accidentally killed. (The details of how they conceive their children are best glossed over.) With the neighbours asking whether she has pets as well as kids, she decides to move the family to the mountains to avoid scrutiny. But locals frown on her fumbling attempts to feed everyone from her vegetable patch, as she simultaneously struggles to cope with Yuki and Ame’s bestial and human needs. Her son is a clingy mother’s boy, while her daughter is a whirlwind of claws and teeth who awkwardly insists on starting proper human school. Continue reading...

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