Omohide Poro Poro
Only Yesterday
by Isao Takahata – Japan, 1991
(118', Japanese with Italian subtitles)
Okajima Taeko, a 27 years old single woman from Tokyo, works as a temp. With summer coming up, she decides to take a break and go to Yamagata's countryside to visit her brother in law's brother's family, to lend her strength for the seasonal safflower harvest. Inspired by the place's atmosphere and by her conversations with Toshio, a farmer with which she immediately clicks, Taeko follows her memories and thinks back to all the most important moments from her childhood, starting to question her adult choices too.
Omohide Poro Poro (literally: Moving memories) takes an unusual subject for an animation movie offering a realistic and intimate drama written for an adult public, addressed especially to women, more like a Yasujirō Ozu or Mikio Naruse movie.
However, the feature film had good success at the box office, resulting in the highest grossing movie in Japan in 1991.
Isao Takahata
Director, screenwriter, producer, and co-founder of Studio Ghibli with his friend and colleague Hayao Miyazaki. Praised by international critic for his amazing sensibility, he is considered one of the cornerstones of an entire way of doing animation. His interests in cinema history and studies of French literature met when, in 1953, La Bergére et le ramoneur by Grimault and Prèvert aired, which represents a true enlightenment for young Takahata, the starting point to explore all that animation can do.