Wolf Children: Strange and Saccarhine

Wolf Children: Strange and Saccharine

SPOILERS BELOW

I recently watched the 2012 Mamoru Hosoda directed film Wolf Children. First of all, this type of movie is not for me. It is not a Studio Ghibli film but it would be apt to compare it to movies such as My Neighbor Totoro or Spirited Away. It has an idyllic vibe with similar music, storylines and characters that tug hard on the heart strings. To some this may strike the resonant emotional chord and make one well up with tears. To me, it's just a little too perfect, coming across over-the-top corny. I do recognize this as a qualitatively good movie, just not to my taste.

The storyline is in the vein of a modern tragic fairytale. A young woman goes to college in a Japanese metropolis. Here she meets a young man and falls in love. However, it turns out the man is werewolf, which he reveals to her later. In fact he transforms into a wolf and confesses this to her in the moonlit scene right before they're about to make love. This is my second main criticism of the movie, humans having sex with animals (later giving birth to half animal half human creatures) creeps me out. Perhaps because of this the rating should be higher than PG, or maybe it's not such a big deal if you feel that fiction stays fiction, but it really felt icky to me. It's not a definite problem, but I think there is at least a reasonable discussion to be had on this point.

Alright, continuing with the storyline...

So, the young woman and the young werewolf make love and the young woman becomes pregnant. Over a few years she gives birth to two half-human half-wolf children. The children transform into wolf form under emotional stress. For various reasons related to the half-wolf challenges the couple leads a very sheltered existence.

One night the young man goes out, and does not return home, so the young woman goes out (babies in tow in carriers on her rain jacket), to find him. The wolf has died and some garbage workers pull his carcass out of a sewer drain... The woman tries to stop them as they load the body into a trash compactor but they push her aside. So the young woman has to take care of these children on her own...

There are many challenges for this woman and her young family. She does not know whether to take the youngsters to the doctor or the vet... The children howl at the moon, and her landlord kicks her out because of this... Social services come to check on the children because there is no record of them being vaccinated. So, the young woman eventually moves to a place in the countryside.

Here, she attempts to grow vegetables but of course this is difficult to do, and it looks like the family may starve. Farmers in the area are no help, rebuking her for being a soft city dweller... Even the stories she picks up at the library end with the wolf dying, and this terrifies her son.

As you can surmise, this movie is really trying to hit every tragic beat it can, all to that oh-so-dramatic string music you would expect.

This movie is critically and fan acclaimed alike as a classic on Rotten Tomatoes, so take that as you will. Watch this movie if you're looking to cry at a modern fairytale. Don't watch if overdone cliches or human-animal romantic relationships bother you.