Ugo Bienvenu’s Oscar-nominated animated film is finally starting to move from the festival circuit to limited theatrical release in the U.S. Along with Little Amelie, the two French animation nominees are little known to general U.S audiences, and also highly unlikely to win against the KPop Demon Hunters juggernaut. However, the industry recognition will thankfully inspire more viewers to experience this charming production.
Arco is a ten-year-old boy living in a utopian far future where families travel through time for fun, leaving rainbow trails in the sky as they move. Unfortunately for Arco, his parents refuse to let him time jump until he’s 12, dashing his plans to see dinosaurs in person. When he steals his sibling’s time-travel accessories and escapes through time to the past, he ends up in 2075. He immediately loses a vital part of his equipment and meets a young girl around his age named Iris. Fun trivia: arcoíris is the Spanish word for rainbow, so the two principal characters are clearly meant to be together to solve Arco’s dilemma. The film has shades of E.T. as the trapped traveller tries to figure out how to get home, but its hand-drawn visual language appears far more inspired by anime, specifically the works of Makoto Shinkai (Your Name, Suzume).
Buy your name. hardcoverLike Shinkai, Bienvenu is highly involved in the intricate production details of the film, wearing a dizzying array of hats in the credits as director, screenwriter, producer, art direction and character design, storyboard, and color/stylization of the background design. Bienvenu’s suburban settings of 2075 are richly detailed, with lush, sylvan backgrounds revealing that nature is largely living in harmony with a society where most essential functions have been offloaded to robots. Those greenery-heavy background designs are the biggest nod to Shinkai, as well as Hayao Miyazaki, but the character design styles also appear closer to anime than dessin animé.
There is another inspiration revealed by Arco’s attire: Little Nemo in Slumberland. Arco is typically dressed in billowy blouses with frilly collars, instantly recalling Nemo’s signature getup for his nocturnal dream journeys. While Arco isn’t sleeping like Nemo, he is on a fantastic adventure through the clouds to a strange, unfamiliar place.
Unlike the hyperactive U.S. Oscar nominees designed by committee to maintain the attention of easily distracted tots, Arco has a slow, deliberate pace that gives the fairly basic plot plenty of room to breathe. There aren’t really any surprises or intriguing turns, but Bienvenu leaves space for a bit of clowning around to lighten the mood, here represented by three identically dressed conspiracy junkies who are following Arco for proof of their theories. The trio are voiced by Will Ferrell, Andy Samberg, and Flea in the U.S. dub, providing a blast of star power otherwise reserved for Natalie Portman and Mark Ruffalo as Arco’s parents as well as Iris’s dual-voiced robot nanny.
Arco is visually dazzling if somewhat narratively flat. Like Miyazaki’s films, there’s an environmental message most firmly reinforced by the spectacular artistry of the wooded settings. At its heart though, it’s a sweet tale of two kids from different places forging a new friendship, universally relatable in its simplicity and enhanced by Bienvenu’s detailed imagining of two futures.
Arco is now playing in limited release in NY and LA before rolling out to the rest of the country on January 30th.
