You thought Totoro was a quiet movie? Try this one. Taeko, an office girl from Tokyo, takes a ten-day vacation in the country, helping with the safflower harvest on a relative's farm. As she leaves work, she begins to ponder her past. With numerous flashbacks to her school days, we follow her train of thought as she dwells intensely on her fifth-grade year, wondering if, perhaps, something went wrong with her life. Between long days in the fields, Taeko unburdens herself to anyone who will listen, and finds a friend in Toshio, a second cousin who is into organic farming.

A very deep, meaningful, and mostly peaceful movie, "OPP" intersperses beautiful scenes of the countryside with nostalgic views of 60s Japan, complete with bits of period music and television, and soaks it all in a bath of introspection that will seem familiar to the non-Japanese viewer, although some aspects of the Japanese mindset are harder to follow. The characters are remarkably real and live believable lives; it is one of those films with enough depth to encourage discussion for weeks to come.

Okajima Taeko is about to take a vacation. But not having any relatives to speak of, she decides to visit some relatives of her sister's husband, and work on their farm a few hours north of her home in Tokyo. The slow, laborious process of picking benibana for use as dye gives her an opportunity to reflect on her past, and what her life goals might be. But as time progresses, Taeko begins to realize that her life has so far been steady, but for the most part, unfulfilling and aimless. Through unfolding memories and the kind support of her friend Toshio, she begins to re-evaluate her life. And with a little help from past, she may yet be able to build a new future...

What a wonderful flick. No loud car chases, no big robots, no weird fantasy characters, no adolescent sight gags. This is storytelling in its purest form; only that the feature also happens to be animated. This is one movie that could have just as easily have been live action, and would have been almost as effective. 'Almost', because of some visual techniques that Studio Ghibli used throughout... but more on that later.

The story is pretty simple in itself. When Okajima Taeko takes her vacation, she doesn't visit her own relatives (of which she has very few) but those of an her sister's husband. Taeko is emotionally lost, though she doesn't know it yet. Though a series of flashbacks, aspects of her personal life are revealed, much like peeling away layers of an onion. And just like real life, these 'layers' can sometimes bring tears. The slow realisation how Taeko's life has been shaped by outside forces, and that she was now a product of this lifestyle does not come easily. Yet, the child that dares to dream still lives within, and as her vacation amongst the benibana harvesters progresses, we see a type of healing process begin to occur.

Some of the storytelling techniques used in this movie are nothing less than magical -- and at times, wonderfully sublime. When Taeko first arrives at the town, note that there are very few people about. But slowly, as the story progresses, it seems that you see more and more of the residents, as if the community itself was beginning to accept her as one of its own. All the flashbacks are done in a beautiful watercolour-like wash, the fringes faded to white like so many memories