Today, I watched the Studio Ghibli movie “When Marnie Was There” for the first time. I had no idea what the movie was about when I first decided to watch it. I hadn’t read any reviews or posts about it beforehand. The only thing I knew about it was that it was made by the same studio that gave us the visually splendid “Spirited Away” and the charmingly sweet “My Neighbor Totoro.”

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Even though I like a lot of Studio Ghibli films, I’ve never really been able to relate to their stories on a personal level. “When Marnie Was There” was different for me. I was surprised by how much I saw myself in the main character. And I was surprised by how invested I was in the central relationship between the protagonist Anna and her mysterious new friend Marnie.

This is why, as a bisexual girl, this movie tore my heart in half. But not, I presume, in the way the creators intended.

Let’s first talk about the plot. Anna is a depressed girl living with her foster parents in the city. Because of her asthma, her foster mom (whom she calls “Auntie”) decided to let her spend the summer with some relatives in the countryside and breathe some fresh air for a change. As soon as she gets there, Anna finds herself drawn to a beautiful yet seemingly abandoned mansion. Here, she meets Marnie, who becomes her first-ever friend.

When Anna and Marnie first come face-to-face, they confess that they had already seen each other in their dreams. It is immediately clear to the viewer that there is something stranger going on. In the morning, the mansion where Marnie claims she lives is deserted. Yet, there in the night-time, she appears in her night gown, drawing Anna into her world.

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The two girls become close, have sweet picnics, dance together, share their most closely-held secrets, and declare their love for one another.

Of course, even while I was watching the movie, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I kept thinking, “Did they really do it? Did Studio Ghibli actually create a sweet, romantic story between two girls?” The optimistic part of me believed that it could happen-that is was happening. Meanwhile, the cynical part of me said, “Nope. They’re gonna be related somehow. Marnie’s gonna end up being her ancestor or something.”

And… *SPOILER ALERT* the cynical part of me was right.

So, as it turns out, Marnie was Anna’s grandmother. And the entire story was about Marnie learning to heal and let go of her feelings of abandonment.

There is nothing wrong with this story. In fact, I found the film to be quite heartwarming as a tale about investigating one’s past in order to better understand one’s self.

However, as a non-straight person, I couldn’t help getting disappointed at the plot twist. LGBT love stories, especially female LGBT love stories, are hard to come by. As I watched “When Marnie Was There,” I couldn’t stop seeing my story reflected on the screen.

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I was once Anna, the lonely, isolated girl who felt like no one understood her. Back then, I could only express my feelings through art, the same way Anna did. I always felt like an outcast. I thought that no one could ever understand what I was going through… mostly because I didn’t understand what I was going through. I felt different but I didn’t know why.

My first serious female crush was a girl I knew in high school. We were 11 or 12 back then (the same age Anna and Marnie seemed to be). I liked her very much, even though I couldn’t admit that to myself at the time. Her hair was always in a ponytail, and she wore her black-rimmed glasses. She was a lovely singer, a creative doodler, and an overall good student.

During those days, I didn’t understand what exactly it was that I felt toward her. I admired her, sure. I saw her as a good friend (and, at the time, I even thought that she was my only friend at school). She was the only one who regularly talked to me and invited me to hang out. She would study with me and tell me about the movies she’s seen. When I was with her, I didn’t feel like an outcast. I just felt like me.

In “When Marnie Was There,” we are asked to put ourselves in Anna’s shoes. We see Marnie the way Anna sees her. We see the way Anna blushes when Marnie looks into her eyes or holds her hands. We see the jealous look on her face when she sees Marnie dancing with a boy. We see their intimate connection and the role that they play in each other’s lives. Of course, I know that not all intimate relationships are automatically romantic. However, it’s hard for me not to see myself in this story, which is so much like my own experience with “puppy love.”

Maybe the subtext was intended, maybe it wasn’t. Maybe I was just seeing things that weren’t there. Or maybe the dearth of LGBT stories in media has made me seek out stories that even remotely resembled my own.

Anyway, even though it is a good movie that deserves more recognition, I will always see “When Marnie Was There” not as a masterpiece of filmmaking but as the queer love story it could’ve been.

Source: https://t-tees.com
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