Movie – The girl who Leapt through time

Movie – The girl who Leapt through time 
Original title : Toki o kakeru shôjo 
French title : la traversée du temps 

Score : 7.5/10 

Year : 2006 

Director:  Mamoru Hosoda

Cinematography: 

Music: Kiyoshi Yoshida (but also Bach and others as seen on wiki)

Country: Japan

Language: Japanese 

Duration: 1h38 

Writers:  Yasutaka Tsutsui (novel) ; Satoko Okudera (screenplay)
Full cast (IMDB) 

Makoto Konno, a student at Kuranose High School in Tokyo, Japan, describes herself as a rather average teen ; she's not too bright but not too really dumb either ; she's not very agile, but not totally clumsy... except for today, when the movie starts, in Mid-July of an undisclosed year. The first few minutes show her routine and boring life, and then, she discovers a message written on a blackboard, talking about time... On her way home, her bicycle breaks fail, and she realizes that she's about to die as she's flying over the railroad crossing exactly when a train passes at high speed. She finds herself transported back in time, back in the short-distance past : just a few moments before this accident. 


At first, she doesn't realize this, but soon, as she starts to fathom this time-leap backwards, she starts experimenting and using this newfound power to her own selfish and childish needs... But, her choices affect others, and as the movie progresses, she has to learn to better control her urges to time leap for no reason, until the reality that she ran out of allotted leaps have been elapsed, and that this is going to have dire consequences... This she learns the truth about this power, where and why it came by her, but it might be just too late for her to fix anything, and so she runs to avoid the unavoidable disaster. 

I find the overall messages about choices and consequences quite interesting and the manner in which the movie treats this boring and careless girl's use of time travel to evolve her character and introduces her some exciting and at times moving scenes, where despite her early annoying personality, she became attaching and I kept watching, to find out precisely if and what would happen. The movie didn't subscribe to predictable courses of action, and depicted also an interesting motive for time travel, and also displayed high value of art, and a specific painting is shown to have more than one possible meaning, which was a great touch, and rather innovative. 

The fact Makoto travels backwards in time and re-lives her immediate past (from a few minutes to a few hours) reminds of Groundhog day, but diverges from it in many aspects. Not only the main and secondary characters are teens and in Japan, but also the time-dilation isn't fixed. The character doesn't re-live the same exact day endlessly, but rather goes back in time up to a few days, where her choices affect outcomes. It also has a moment of revelation that is unique in its nature and includes a frozen moment in time, where the entire world around her seems to have stopped, but this moment serves a key purpose. It does share, however, an overall message that a person must be better in order to get out of a cycle, but then again, goes about it in a different path.

I didn't enjoy every single moment of the Girl who leapt, and yet, I needed to see it to its end. It's different enough from other movies of the same genre and topic, and even if I missed about 7 minutes of scenes around the middle (due to a glitch on the dvd I borrowed at the library), I still felt the story was compelling, even if the character voices annoyed me. 
In short, the story, reveals, art, and cinematography are all good. 

The dvd I watched was the French edition EAN 3700091012667 with minimal content. 
The movie in 1.77:1 ratio, in color, an overall good image quality.

Sound & languages : 
Original Japanese, French and German dubs, each in 5.1 & 2.0. 
Additionally Italian, in 2.0 only. 
Optional subtitles : French, German, Dutch and Italian. 
You must choose these in the menu as the dvd doesn't allow switching in midstream - but does allow to go back to the menu if needed. 

Bonuses? Dvd credits (whatever this means), and... trailers for the french editor, Kaze, who proposes many japanimation movies and shows in France. 
The dvd is region 2 as expected. 

I cannot attest to the 52-page booklet that comes with it, as the library didn't include it.