When Marnie Was There

2014 ‘思い出のマーニー’ Directed by Hiromasa Yonebayashi

Promise we'll remain a secret, forever.

Upon being sent to live with relatives in the countryside due to an illness, an emotionally distant adolescent girl becomes obsessed with an abandoned mansion and infatuated with a girl who lives there - a girl who may or may not be real.

Sara Takatsuki Kasumi Arimura Nanako Matsushima Susumu Terajima Toshie Negishi Ryôko Moriyama Kazuko Yoshiyuki Hitomi Kuroki Hiroyuki Morisaki Takuma Otoo Hana Sugisaki Bari Suzuki Shigeyuki Totsugi Ken Yasuda Yo Oizumi

Alternative Titles

Omoide no Mani, Omoide no Mânî, Marnie – min hemmelige venninne, Kada je Marni bila tu, Коли Мані була тут, Коли Марні була тут, Спогади Мані

drama animation

104 mins More details at IMDb TMDb Report this film

Popular reviews

Review by 👽 Zara 👽 ★★★★ 2

i can't believe studio ghibli queerbaited me
Review by Sally Jane Black 18

CW: gender/transgender issues, sexuality/queerness, race, indirect abuse reference, families, erasure
It's so easy to feel like you don't have a family. One small thing, one small moment, can rupture bonds that we're told hold tighter and stronger than any other. Family is so fragile, because the promise inherent in every story told about families is so profound. Anything can shatter that impossible illusion. It can be the perception that your mother is being paid to have you, or it can be the way your father yelled that one time, or it can be... worse things. For queer or trans kids, of course, all other things being equal, family tends to be even more fragile than for straight and cisgender kids.…
Review by davidehrlich ★★★★ 1

UPDATE: READ MY FULL REVIEW ON TIME OUT
It’s fitting that the last Studio Ghibli film for the foreseeable future is a simple, elegiac story about a young woman who learns the power of *drawing* from the past.
no, it's not Miyazaki or Takahata, but it's the next best thing.
on my way out of the movie, I saw an old woman walk directly into a wall because she was crying so hard. she seemed okay.
#FrozenFever
Review by Dara Khan 9

I saw When Marnie Was There this morning. By evening I was on my way to the theater to see it again. That's a first for me.
It wasn't just that my local cinema provided both dubbed and subtitled screenings. Sure, I wanted to see both versions. But more than that, I wanted to return to the world of this movie because it stirred some deep nerve cluster that connected my childhood to my adulthood. That's a quality that I've found time and time again in Studio Ghibli's films.
I hope this isn't their last. I really do. But if it is, as sad as that is, I'll remain grateful for this last flare of color, motion, sound, and the…
Review by clementine ★★★★ 6

i thought they were...you know....until i found out they were...you know...
Review by lauren ★★★ 1

harold................................................never mind
Review by Michael Stuhlman ★★★★½ 1

Wow. I truly wasn't expecting that. At first the movie was slow going, seemed overtly sad and just kind of depressing for the sake of being depressing. Once the story starts to kick in though and the titular character is introduced, things shift greatly and we end up getting an emotionally resonant story about the loneliness of youth, the importance of friends and the undeniable impact of family. I'm definitely going to watch this one again once the english dub get's released, it's got a great cast and I'd love to go through this one a second time. Given this could be Ghibli's last feature, there is an even deeper underlying melancholy to the film. Seek it out, fans of animation and especially Ghibli will not be disappointed.
Review by AlexDavies ★★★★★ 2

Have you ever been unhappy with everyone and yourself but don’t know why? Alone because you either hurt the ones who come close or because you choose it to be that way. Nothing they do upsets you, you’re just upset with the world around you. You feel just there, not depressed, not happy. There like a tree. You feel like crying because you don’t whose fault it is. It can’t be anyone else’s. Something has to be wrong with you. So you end up hating who you are. No one listens to you, no one hears you, but you hardly share anyways. You’ve usually been comfortable with who you are, you’re on the outside, solitaire But today the sting is…
Review by Steve G 🐝 ★★★★½

The Letterboxd Era Catch Up 2: The Last Stand
Studio Ghibli were sitting around their office wondering what they should do next.
"Hey I got one."
*yawning*
"Yeah, go on then."
"How about we make one of the most precise, identifiable and moving films about social anxiety and childhood displacement ever made. One that treats children with respect and will also speak to all the adults watching."
"Ahh, what the hell. Let's do it."
And they did. Absolutely wonderful.
Review by Erika ★★★★½

I've never felt so betrayed in my life
Review by Vilu ★★★ 4

Where did the lesbians go??
Review by matt lynch ★★★½

Wraps itself up a bit too neatly but until then sweet and patient and mysterious.

Recent reviews

Review by Gabriella ★

This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

Legitimately thought she was falling in love with a random ghost girl... turns out it was the child ghost of her grandma and she was just there so the main girl could learn how to cope? interesting
Review by raquel ★★★★ 1

thanks @pat for the hbo log in!! now I can begin to watch everything and anything studio ghibli starting with this one :) this movie was pretty good tbh & did not turn out the way I thought it would (in a good way!) also loved how everything came full circle
Review by aabril ★★★★½

que HERMOSA 🥺
Review by joly ★★★★½

for the first moment i dont really get that movie but after marnie shows up i start like it so much... and the end.... is so fcking good
Review by Diego ★★★★

anyway i guess it’s nice when people care about you and love you and wow...
anna was kind of edgy but i liked her

(also i was expecting... you know)
Review by aliasnod ★★★★

This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

me apaixonei pelo que eu inventei de (vó)cê
Review by eumenides ★★★★

Durante la primera hora estaba segurísima de que era una película de lesbianas
Review by Max Shoham ★★★★★ 1

Content warning: suicide
My family friends own a cottage in Prince Edward county. Every August since I was 7, my family and I would spend 2 weeks there, alone. At the beginning we paid rent to the owners, but as the years have passed, and we’ve come closer to the couple, we’ve gone for free. Sometimes in the winter, if we’re on a road trip to quebec, we’ll stop by the cottage for an impromptu visit. It’s a squat blue house, on an island called Waupoos. In the early months, the lake is frozen solid enough for us to walk from the mainland, and be cosily huddled in blankets, in the walls of the cottage in no time. But it’s…
Review by diana garza ★★★★★

Es una película llena de nostalgia, y con un final que no me esperaba pero que es muy emotivo.
Hay una cancion que aparece en los creditos que me encanta "Fine on the Outside" describe muy bien la vida de Ana, la protagonista.
Review by EvilNarwhal ★★★★★

This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

I love this film, and I wouldn't give it anything less than 5 stars for bringing this beautiful story to life. That being said, after having read the novel, I do think there are a few odd choices that were made on how they adapted this. While I don't think any of these really detract from the film, I do think they make the movie feel a bit different from the original book. One thing that they did that feels odd to me, for example, is they japanesified it. I'm not sure why Studio Ghibli would decide to do this when in the past they have kept stories such as Howl's Moving Castle intact; it's an especially odd decision when…
Review by ash ★★★

studio ghilbi you are so wrong for that ending.......
Review by Madu ★★★★★

lindo, lindo, o filme me deixou curiosa e cativada desde o começo e esse final foi simplesmente tudo o que eu precisava