WHERE IS ANNE FRANK

Anne Frank’s imaginary friend, Kitty, springs magically to life.

In a graphic-novel adaptation of his 2021 animated film, Israeli director/screenwriter Folman has found a new way to monetize the legacy of Anne Frank. The catalyst for the story’s events is—what else?—a burst of lightning, which by striking the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam at precisely the right moment, at precisely the right angle, causes Kitty—the imaginary friend to whom Anne Frank addressed each diary entry—to come to life. In illustrator Guberman’s hands, Kitty is red-haired and willowy, with the bland, wide-eyed expression of a typical Disney heroine—and for that matter, so is Anne, who is immediately stripped of all the qualities that made her so singular in her own life and work. Kitty, who can’t remember what happened to Anne and the rest of the Frank family, is launched on a series of inane adventures around Amsterdam while she tries to finish reading the diary (as she reads, she’s propelled into Anne’s memories). In one frame, Anne and Peter van Daan are listening to the radio. They’ve been growing closer. Meanwhile, Russian forces have broken through Leningrad. In the cel, Anne tips her head coyly toward Peter, her hand to her chin, her eyebrows raised flirtatiously. The caption reads, “One-third of the city’s population have died of starvation.” It’s a moment of bad taste that speaks to Folman’s overarching carelessness. In the end, Folman makes his story into a finger-wagging parable about how, at the same time that it profits from Anne Frank’s legacy, Europe is now failing the many migrants currently seeking refuge there. That Folman should level this charge, given how shamelessly he has exploited that legacy for his own use, is more than offensive—it borders on the obscene.

By turns silly and tedious, exploitative and moralistic, the book fails on all fronts.