So Hayao Miyazaki is a feminist – I get that – but a feminizer? Drawing pockets of bemused laughter from a near-capacity Gala Opening crowd, the title character of Howl’s Moving Castle resembled little of the robust hero archetype we were probably expecting. A love story, the notion of the film’s girl – a fearless, determined wee thing by even Miyazaki’s standards – falling for a Prince Charming staple crossbred with Ziggy Stardust by way of Liberace by way of, errr, Paris Hilton, took some convincing, and I certainly can’t recall another time when bishonen (an attractive, effeminate male character in anime) played such a full frontal role in Miyazaki’s universe.

Adorned with jewellery, Carson-esque locks and a knack for interior design and fashion, he’s also something of a drama queen, breaking down at one point in a torrent of spell-concocted angst because his golden hair just turned bright red. Life’s not worth living if you can’t be beautiful, apparently; an admission that suggests (well, drives home) the possibility that Howl is just a little bit queer…

Things don’t quite fit together in Miyazaki’s latest animated spectacle, but that’s kind of the idea, and if the film verges on the ridiculous from its strange romantic entanglement alone, then the tone is set squarely for the rest to spiral gloriously out of control. Everything appears of arbitrary pluck – the castle with legs, the fire that talks, the blubberingly obese Witch of the Waste – but it all converges somehow… somehow… in a migraine of head-churning wizardry. Miyazaki is in his mid-60s, and yet can amazingly still draw from a limitless well of imagination reserved normally for those more familiar with crayons and footsie pyjamas. Easily the great animator’s most delirious film to date, his narrative progressively loses shape quite deliberately (it seems only he knows what’s going on), escalating until nothing really makes sense anymore – but why should it? I may have left the Embassy needing a paracetamol or two, but rarely ever are headaches this worth it.–TW