Your Name

Your Name does everything it can to entice you. It’s a fantastic recipe; an animated body-swapping, love story disaster movie; everything’s there in the premise, and it sounds so fun and strange and it is.

It throws everything it can at you, flip-flopping between intensity and tenderness, crazy music video montages and very Japanese slow scenes where nothing much at all happens, and it almost goes without saying (it's anime) that it looks and sounds beautiful.

The first half draws you in with mystery, sweet and subtle characterisation and great boob jokes, and it’s an impressive storytelling feat to show a romantic relationship without having the lovers meet until late in the movie without you noticing.

When the stakes are raised it gets a lot tenser. There’s a disaster, and the relationship is at risk, not through romcom contrivance but the sadly realistic way that ‘shit happens’, even in a fantasy. There are twists and turbulence and you want to so much for everything to work out because you’re not convinced it will. And the film drags on, teasing you. Mitsuha falls off her bike not for plot but just to make your heart jump. It gets a little tiring and the emotional hits are less subtle. It feels long.

But the joy and excess are both the result of the obvious effort poured into every moment; why dislike a film for trying too hard when there’s so, so much to love?

 

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