Takayuki Hirao’s animated feature is set in the fictional Nyallywood, where a B-movie producer in pigtails and a sailor dress takes on a serious-minded film about ageing, art and loss

Both the glamour and the difficulties of film-making are covered in Takayuki Hirao’s film-loving animation feature. Adapted from a manga series, the film is set in the fictional Nyallywood, a more colourful stand-in for the real Hollywood, complete with sunshine, rows of palm trees and a boulevard of stars. What makes this portrait of movie studios more surreal is Pompo herself. A studio executive in the body of a petite child prodigy – she saunters around in pigtails and a sailor dress – Pompo specialises in B movies, the kind of flicks that would have a sexy starlet terrorised by sharks.

All of this changes, however, when Pompo decides to take a chance on Gene, a first-time director, and an ingenue named Natalie Woodward – get the reference? – in a seriously minded project about ageing, art and loss. As the film switches gears from an animated reimagination of Hollywood to an inspirational parable on the magic of cinema, the tone turns cloyingly saccharine, pushing hollow maxims such as how damaged people make better artists, or that a film should be no longer than 90 minutes.