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When Little Amélie or the Character of Rain premiered earlier this year in the Directors’ Fortnight at Cannes, it was lauded for its bold graphic visual style and heartfelt story adapted from Amélie Nothomb’s bestselling autobiographical novel. The 2D, digitally animated French-language film went on to win the Audience Award at Annecy, had its North American premiere at Toronto and will reach U.S. theaters via distributor GKIDS beginning November 7.
In postwar Japan, where Western foreigners lived both inside and outside local traditions, Amélie (voiced by Loïse Charpentier) spends her early childhood in the care of her devoted nanny, Nishio-san (Victoria Grosbois). To her family, she is a distant and unknowable cipher, reflecting the Japanese belief that young children are more akin to gods than humans. That sense of mystery unravels on Amélie’s third birthday, when a family event — and her very first taste of chocolate — alters her world and sets her on a path of discovery.
The 78-minute film is directed by Maïlys Vallade and Liane-Cho Han from a screenplay by Han and Vallade alongside French screenwriter Aude Py and art director and production designer Eddine Noël (Long Way North, The Little Prince). It was produced by Ikki Films and Maybe Movies, with producers Nidia Santiago, Edwina Liard, Claire La Combe and Henri Magalon, and executive producers Jean-Michel Spiner and Mireille Sarrazin.
All in the Family
For Vallade and Han, both Gobelins alumni and longtime collaborators, the project is the culmination of years of shared experience. Yet it is also a first — their debut feature, one that brings to life the fragility and wonder of childhood through a handcrafted graphic style created with their close-knit artistic “family.”
Han was 19 when he discovered Nothomb’s novel, The Character of Rain. “It left a strong impression on me, and I had always dreamed of adapting it one day,” he recalls. Years later, while working with Vallade on Rémi Chayé’s Calamity, a Childhood of Martha Jane Cannary, he gave her a copy of the book, planting a seed that would become their joint project.
Vallade thought the book’s deeply personal perspective on childhood was aligned with the kind of storytelling she and Han were already pursuing. She had previously contributed to Mark Osborne’s The Little Prince before joining Han on Calamity, and both felt that Nothomb’s story invited a new level of creative challenge.
Most of the core creative team had already worked together on Chayé’s visually groundbreaking films, developing a shared shorthand that carried into Little Amélie. Led by production designer and art director Noël, the visual development team included character designers Marietta Ren (Calamity, Arcane, Lazarus) and Marion Roussel (Song of the Sea, Calamity), whose early pencil and watercolor sketches helped define the film’s handmade sensibility. Around them, the circle expanded: Calamity alum Juliette Laurent oversaw animation, Roussel directed layouts alongside Hanne Galvez (The Summit of the Gods), and concept artists Justine Thibault and Simon Dumonceau — both Calamity veterans — anchored the background department.
Over the course of earlier projects, the two directors had built such strong bonds with these artists that decisions often required no explanation. “We had already worked together with Eddine, Marietta and Marion,” Vallade recounts. “Everyone knew the style, the universe. We didn’t have to explain.” Han adds, “It’s like a conversation between old friends. That’s why we could move quickly.”
Building a Visual Language
The film’s handcrafted visual style became its unifying language as Vallade and Han built on the graphic techniques they had first explored with Calamity. Under the guidance of Noël, who carried out early research on the palette and visual direction, the team embraced rounder shapes, pastel tones and layered transparencies to suggest proximity and distance. Flat shapes delicately layered with digital touches give the visuals a gouache-like texture.
“We like this way of working without outlines, so as to not to close the character in,” says Vallade, describing how this technique allows characters to blend harmoniously with the backgrounds and lighting.
Their influences were wide-ranging but also deeply personal. Working within Chayé’s studio, Maybe Movies, they carried forward lessons from Long Way North and Calamity, while Chayé himself contributed layout work that added painterly elegance to the final visuals.
The directors also looked outward, drawing inspiration from the painterly textures of Tonko House’s Oscar-nominated animated short The Dam Keeper. Other references included Studio Ghibli’s Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata for their atmospheric treatment of childhood and the stark horrors of war, as well as Japanese landscape artists such as Kawase Hasui, the plein-air paintings of Henri Rivière and Jacques Majorelle’s luminous travel sketches, captured on film in Morocco in the Eyes of Majorelle.
“But our biggest inspiration is reality,” says Han, underscoring the filmmakers’ commitment to portraying childhood with honesty.
“Everyone knew the style, the universe. We didn’t have to explain. It’s like a conversation between old friends. That’s why we could move quickly.”
— Director Maïlys Vallade
That sensibility carried into the film’s backgrounds, which were rooted in plein-air studies of autumn leaves, gray winter skies and the first blossoms of spring. Characters, meanwhile, were designed with signature colors that made them instantly recognizable while blending seamlessly into their environments. Together, these choices gave the seasonal shifts and visual world a narrative weight that mirrors Amélie’s own inner journey.
Production & Workflow
In European feature animation, where productions often stretch three or four years, Little Amélie stands out for its breathtaking pace. From production start to delivery, the team finished in just 14 months. “Fourteen months is crazy for a feature,” Han admits. “But because of the preparation, it was possible.”
By the time production began, the visual language was locked, the character designs settled and the workflow defined. “We had already done the research, the style was locked. That’s why we could move so fast,” Vallade explains.
While the handcrafted graphic style established the film’s identity, its realization required a pipeline that was both nimble and decentralized. Vallade and Han designed the workflow around a combination of Adobe Animate and Photoshop. A 3D model of the family house was also built to plan complex point-of-view shots, allowing the directors to map camera movement and perspective before handing sequences to layout and animation teams.
Though centered in France, the pipeline extended well beyond. Backgrounds, layout and effects were handled in Paris; audio post in Rennes; and compositing on Réunion Island. Visual effects artist Olivier Malric (Kung Fu Panda) contributed from Sydney, adding atmospheric details. Vallade and Han themselves worked between Lyon and Denmark, managing the flow of material across time zones. Storyboarding, too, was decentralized, with artists contributing sequences remotely.
Finding Amélie’s Voice
The handcrafted ethos of Little Amélie extended past the visuals into its soundscape. Composer Mari Fukuhara crafted a score that wove together Japanese and European influences, mirroring the novel’s roots in Nothomb’s childhood in Japan and its adaptation through a French creative lens.
The voice cast was assembled with the same care. Grosbois gives warmth to Nishio-san, the caretaker at the center of Amélie’s world, while Laetitia Coryn and Marc Arnaud portray her parents, and Cathy Cerdà voices her grandmother. Japanese actors such as Yumi Fujimori brought authenticity to supporting roles, with Haylee Issembourg, Isaac Schoumsky, François Raison and Emmylou Homs rounding out the ensemble.
“The book has a lot of philosophical, very deep, difficult words that kids could probably not understand, but we really believe that kids understand more than we think.”
— Director Liane-Cho Han
Yet the greatest challenge lay in capturing Amélie herself. The directors needed both a child’s immediacy and a narrator’s voice that carried the weight of hindsight. “The voice coming from the future already knows what will happen, while Amélie’s own lines are anchored in the present,” Han explains.
They chose Charpentier (Sirocco and the Kingdom of the Winds), who was just eight when production began, but as her voice matured the team enlisted additional voices. “We realized we had to layer different voices to keep Amélie believable,” Vallade recalls. This also meant postponing most of the recording until late in production, with animators avoiding lip-sync so the dialog could be integrated at the very end.
Taking Childhood Seriously
Behind these choices was a deeper commitment that shaped every stage of the adaptation. For both filmmakers, the novel’s perspective on childhood was key. “We started with the idea of doing something for an adult audience,” says Vallade. “And quickly, we realized — along with our producers — that it would be good to also target a kids’ audience.”
Han adds that what drew him to the book in the first place was the gravity it placed on a child’s inner world. “It takes childhood very seriously,” he explains, noting that the directors wanted to reflect that same honesty on screen. For Vallade, this meant resisting simplification: “We realized we had to make a film that could speak to children but without underestimating them.”
Shaping an adult novel into a film that could resonate with children was no small task. “The book has a lot of philosophical, very deep, difficult words that kids could probably not understand,” Han acknowledges. “But we really believe that kids understand more than we think.”
GKIDS will release Little Amélie or the Character of Rain nationwide on November 7 (tickets and more info available here). Watch an exclusive clip previously shared with Animation Magazine here and the new trailer below.
