魔女の宅急便

a film by Hayao Miyazaki

Not all witches are wicked. Kiki, a 13-year-old witch-in-training, is certainly not wicked. She reminds me of young Kayo from The Wind Rises and one of my former pupils in Cantabria. (That latter one has every chance to develop her wicked side though.) Riding a broom and ability of understand her black cat are Kiki’s only magical powers, and then she loses even them, albeit temporarily. On the contrary, the film has lost none. We watched it with Timur, for the n^th time, just a few days ago. I told him that the town, Koriko, was mostly based on Stockholm.
“Where is that?”, he asked.
“We went there together. It was as recent as last year.”
“Did we?”
“Yes. We took a ferry from Helsinki.”
“Aaa”, Timur said. Obviously he didn’t remember.
“Well. It looks pretty much like this.”