This movie has a lot of charm—bright colors, quirky characters, surrealist effects, wonderful actors, and a sense of humor all its own. I would not call it a comedy the way, say, Juzo Itami’s stuff is comedy or anything Hollywood tries to shove down our throats at the multiplex is (allegedly) comedy, but there’s a lot to make the viewer smile, not the least of which is Tadanobu. He chooses some interesting projects, that guy. I first noticed him in Last Life in the Universe, another dreamy, trippy meditation in the countryside, and while his character here is totally different there is a family resemblance in the two films, which means I loved them both.

The giant six-year old is my personal favorite recurring visual, a weirdly effective visualization of what James Hillman and Michael Ventura call “the watcher”—that quiet, seemingly slightly older and wiser version of ourselves that each of us carries in our heads, a sympathetic presence that is sometimes a conscience but usually just an observer and recorder of our private behavior. Here the giant six-year-old is sort of a goad for her human counterpart to keep trying to master the goal she’s set herself and it totally works as an image, metaphor, what have you.

There’s also a giant, world-devouring sunflower, a dancer on the edge of a river, a demented and charming grandfather and a mommy trying to get back into her career as an animator of, yes, anime. It’s a strange mix of elements but it comes off as lovely and true.