Sitges 09: SUMMER WARS Review

[Our thanks to Guillem Rosset for the following review.]

One of the things that I love about a film festival like Sitges is the chance to discover hidden treasures. I'm even more grateful when this treasure is a film you should have been waiting for months but for some reason has slipped through your radar. Which is even worse when the people behind it are the same ones responsible for The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, a film I really enjoyed in a previous Sitges festival. Obviously I'm talking about Summer Wars, directed by Mamoru Hosoda and produced by Japanese animation studio Madhouse (another reason the movie should have been in my pending list).

At first sight, the world of Summer Wars looks practically identical to contemporary Japan. But there's one big difference: the existence of Oz. A mix between social network and virtual world (think of it like some kind of Facebook taken to new heights), accessible through phone, Internet, TV and practically any electronic device you can think of. You can find anything inside Oz, ranging from the typical chat rooms to every kind of entertainment, shop, business and even government services like traffic, police and fireman departments. Everything is connected to this massive worldwide network, all you have to do is register, create your own virtual avatar and log in.

And it's in this world where we find our characters. Kenji is a high school student, pretty gifted for maths, who spends his summer working as an Oz operator when receives a sudden proposal from Natsuki, one of the school's most popular girls (and of course Kenji's secret love interest): to accompany her in a visit to her family's hometown for a family reunion. Once there, Kenji finds out that in fact Natsuki wants him to act as her boyfriend in front of her grandmother and family's matriarch, who's about to celebrate her 90th anniversary. He also gets to know the rest of the family, and oh boy, quite a large family that is. Descendant from an old samurai clan, her family was once very rich and powerful but now all that remains is their old (but magnificent) house. Things get even worse for Kenji when suddenly he becomes the main suspect of a hacker attack on Oz, which causes chaos along the world trough its network. To deal with the situation the whole family will  stand together and prove that their honor and courage didn't fade away with their wealth.

The wonderful cast of characters is one of the film's greatest strengths, each and every one of them have a personality of its own (and we're talking of a lot of characters here, they're a truly large family!), you get to know them and love them. Opposed to the virtual world of Oz, we find a wonderful portrait of a typical traditional Japanese family, capable of overcoming any problem when standing together. Hosoda manages to take us to an idyllic countryside town still unaware of the unrelenting progress of the technology, and thanks to the attention to the details he brings to life its human and natural landscapes.

But when the movie bring us to the virtual world of Oz, everything changes. Here the creative minds of Madhouse can let their imagination run wild, and the very nature of this world eliminates all the logical restrictions when it comes to create avatars (lots of them) and locations. In those scenes there's a lot of CGI, perfectly integrated with the traditional animation. Without a doubt, Summer Wars is a top class audiovisual show, reaching its heights in the final battle inside Oz.

Once the credits roll and the lights turn on, you'll find yourself with a smile on your face. A film for the entire family as only the animation masters are capable of crafting, and after The Girl Who Leapt Through Time and Summer Wars, I think Mamoru Hosada deserves a place as one of the top contemporary Japanese animators. And it's good to know that once the time comes for Miyazaki to retire (not too soon I hope!) there's people capable of following his steps