This tender and sweet animation from film-makers Maïlys Vallade and Liane-Cho Han is an involving, poignant study of early childhood; how fragile it is, and how strong you feel yourself to be to have outlived or surpassed it. It is based on the autobiographical novella The Character of Rain by Belgian author Amélie Nothomb, published in 2000.

Loïse Charpentier voices the role of Amélie, a little girl living in Kobe, Japan, with her Belgian family in the late 60s; mum, dad and older brother and sister. Until the age of three, she was in a persistent vegetative state, but was miraculously jolted free of it by a terrifying earthquake; yet she emerges quarrelsome and almost feral, to the despair of her parents. That is until her elegant grandmother Claude (Cathy Cerda) comes to visit and gives her a piece of narcotically delicious white Belgian chocolate, which causes Amélie to bloom into a lovely, biddable child who adores her Japanese nanny Nishio-san (Victoria Grosbois).

But there are problems: the family’s icily distant landlady Kashima-san (Yumi Fujimori) not-so-secretly detests her western tenants – and despises Nishio-san for working for them – due to unresolved feelings about allied bombings during the war. And what will happen when Amélie’s grandmother has to leave? And when the whole family have to leave Japan, which Amélie now sees as her adored homeland?

The animation itself is, in its way, a very charming mix of European and Japanese styles, and there’s a lovely final sequence, when Amélie revisits in memory her fractionally younger self in various scenes around the idyllic house and garden.

• Little Amélie is in UK and Irish cinemas from 13 February.