A lonely girl sketches her way toward a friendship that may never have been real. The film moves so quietly you almost miss the moment it breaks you. Studio Ghibli's hand-drawn backgrounds dissolve into the kind of ache that sits with you long after the image fades, because what matters here is not the mystery of who Marnie is, but why Anna needed her to be real. The pacing will lose impatient viewers in the first twenty minutes. For anyone who has ever felt outside looking in, this is the most honest thing ever made about belonging to someone who belongs to you.

Anna Sasaki is a quiet, withdrawn girl who suffers from frequent asthma attacks and lives with a foster parent who worries about her constantly. On a doctor's advice, she is sent to spend the summer with relatives in a small seaside town, where fresher air and a slower pace might help her body and mind. She passes the days sketching. While wandering, she comes across an abandoned mansion called the Marsh House and finds it is not as empty as it looks when she meets a mysterious girl named Marnie. Night after night Anna goes back to see her, and Marnie's lively nature gradually draws her out of her shell. Yet there is more to Marnie than it first seems, and as Anna's stay nears its end, she begins to uncover the truth about the Marsh House in this quiet, mysterious drama about friendship and self-discovery.