FILM

Japan 2010 94 mins Dir: Hiromasa Yonebayashi Starring (voices): Saoirse Ronan, Mark Strong, Tom Holland, Olivia Colman

For film-makers, Mary Norton's 1952 children's novel 'The Borrowers' is something of a hardy perennial. Peter Hewitt's well-received 1997 version was its last outing on screen. In traditional bus queue fashion, two new adaptations are turning up this year. The Beeb is currently filming a feature-length live-action 'Borrowers' starring Stephen Fry, Victoria Wood and Christopher Eccleston, for broadcast at Christmas. Before that, we get this animated version from Japan's Studio Ghibli. Unlike the pig's ear they made of Ursula Le Guin's 'Tales From Earthsea', which clumsily conflated several novels, this is a faithful version, rendered in the studio's familiar lovely pastel shades, with plenty of imaginative touches and no concessions whatsoever to the frantic pacing of much modern animation. Younger children (and their nostalgic parents) will love it, though there's little here for fans of studio boss Hayao Miyazaki's wilder flights of fancy, such as 'Spirited Away' and 'Howl's Moving Castle'.

The story has a sickly boy, here named Sho (Holland), dispatched to live with an elderly relative in the country. In her large, rambling house, he discovers tiddly 14-year-old Arrietty (Ronan) - one of a family of diminutive 'borrowers' who live beneath the floorboards and take a decidedly Marxist view of property redistribution. But their forbidden friendship proves disastrous as Arrietty's fearful parents (Strong, Colman) decide it's time to move out for the family's safety. Hiromasa Yonebayashi, Ghibli's youngest director, delivers plenty of impressive incidental detail and gets the scale and perspective shots just right, with some particularly impressive scuttling about in the house's interstices. Note that the film is released in both dubbed and subtitled versions, so if you have a preference you'd be advised to check which one your local cinema is showing. (Robin Askew)

website www.arriettymovie.co.uk/

Opens: July 29

Copyright Robin Askew 2011