Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman

Unfolding in the wake of the 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan, Pierre Földes’ animation - based on the work of Haruki Murakami - is filled with unexpected movement, from rumbling discontent to relationship aftershocks and from the real to the imagined. The sense of flow extends to the narrative, which weaves together a series of stories, connected not so much by plot intersection as by existential questions of purpose and loss.

Chief among the characters are two bank employees, Mr Komura (voiced by Ryan Bommarito in the English language dub that is currently on release in the UK) and Mr Katagiri (Marcelo Arroyo). Komura is facing a seismic shift in his life, after his girlfriend Kyoko (Shoshana Wilder) suddenly leaves him. Meanwhile, Katagiri, who is under immense stress in the loan department at work, begins to have strange visitations from a giant frog who wants him to help save Tokyo.

A missing cat and a giant worm weave their way through a story that also includes the transportation of a mystery package, wish fulfilment and an unexpected encounter at a love hotel. Földes’, who also composed the music and voices Frog, handles the film's weighty themes lightly, with a, for the most part, softly drawn style that allows colour to sing out. The green of that frog, for example, is neatly mirrored by the tie Katagiri is wearing, while the dominant palate of the story involving Kyoko is red. The animation style also allows subsidiary characters to appear ghostlike in comparison to the main protagonists, something that feels like a further melancholic nod to the loss experienced by Japan in the wake of the natural disaster.

His scoring, too, handles mood carefully, so that there are subtle shifts from classical to smooth jazz when the action shifts to a bar, while a more sinister note is struck in dream sequences and Katagiri’s ambiguous encounters with Frog.

There are deliberately quotes from the likes of Seneca and Nietzsche, while more than one character notes that the one thing that a person cannot escape is themself. Földes holds these ideas gently up to the light but leaves the interpretation to us. While there is, no doubt, a lot going on here and some parts of it are of much less consequence than other consequence than others, all these rumblings generate a lingering resonance.