Other names : Kimi no Na wa.
Year : 2016
Genre : Romance, drama, comedy
Duration : 1 hr. 46 min.
Mitsuha lives in a town in Japan where coffee shops don't exist and yet she still has two bars, one next to the other. She would like to live in a dazzling and wonderful city like Tokyo. This dream comes true when she wakes up one day in the body of a boy her age in Tokyo. From then on she must juggle her school life and a stressful part-time job. Meanwhile, Taki resides in her body. They both begin to reflect on this strange connection and discover it while periodically living each other's lives.
Makoto Shinkai is better at designing and expressing the emotions and gestures of young characters than anyone else, in both comedy and drama. For example, the first thing Taki does while Mitsuha is fondle his own breasts, but Shinkai gives Taki just the right amount of confusion to make us believe that this is how a guy would act, he doesn't exaggerate things like they do in an ecchi series. Whereas Mitsuha, she has more doubts, more embarrassment, but just as much, if not more, curious about what's down there. Because let's face it, although girls that age will deny her curiosity, but everyone knows that they would seek to do the same in Mitsuha's situation.
The drama that is achieved is balanced. When they swap bodies for each other, they must still live normal life in their host's body, which creates an interesting relationship dynamic, as their strengths replace each other's weaknesses on the days of swapping bodies. . Other children tease Mitsuha for being his daughter and she simply accepts the abuse. However, when he is in control. Similarly, she uses her refinement and elegance to foster relationships with her peers, while she spends all of her money in the coffee shops that she loves so much, of course. They are like two best friends looking at each other's back without ever being in the same room.
Your Name is elevated from being a sophisticated romantic comedy by including a dose of seriousness, several doses, rather, a dose of drama that hits the heart, and a teenager's desire to find that special someone. He even knows how adults who have yet to find that person wonder if they missed the opportunity at some point in their lives, which makes the movie more appealing. Where and when did the romance of my youth fade? The team did not create this project as a waste to fill in for romantic comedies in the summer. No, every part of the film that made up the story had been carefully thought out and cared for.
What I like the most about the film is the precision with which Shinkai describes that feeling of frustration and tension, the despair when it comes to remembering a dream once awake, the more we try to search our mind for that dream, the further it moves away. As viewers, we know the content of the dream, of what our protagonists lived, so it feels even more frustrating (described and narrated in a good way) to see our characters forget events so important to them.
This film is a must-see, two teenagers in totally different situations periodically inhabiting each other's body and life. It is an incredibly fun movie but also quite tense, Your Name is a very good dream and romance movie, with excellent animation quality and a spectacular soundtrack.