J Paul Johnson
A sweet, smart ecofeminist science-fiction parable, Arco comes to North American theaters in wide release this week on the crest of a recent Academy Awards nomination for Best Animated Feature. Having debuted at Cannes last year and earning similar nominations at the Critics’ Choice Awards and Golden Globe Awards, the French film is written and directed by Ugo Bienvenu in his feature-film directorial debut and co-produced by Natalie Portman; this English-dubbed release features the voice work of Portman, Will Ferrell, Mark Ruffalo, Flea, and Andy Samberg, giving it a bit of name recognition. More than its voice talent, though, Arco is bound to please forward-thinking parents and their children as a result of its lively palette of colorful artwork, progressivist narrative, and optimistic themes.
Arco is set in two futures. it begins in the farthest-flung of the two, nearly a millennium from now, where young Arco (Juliano Krue Valdi) resides with his loving family of scientist-explorers. Theirs is a peaceful world, one where people exist harmoniously in an environment that nurtures and supports them. There appears to be no war, no famine, no ecological disaster; just knowledge, progress, and peace. Even time travel is possible. It’s a timely reminder of what humanity could have were it to nurture and shepherd, rather than wantonly exploit, its natural resources and capacity for knowledge. Arco and his family sport brightly colored bodysuits that, powered by a gemstone they wear on the forehead, enables flight, a technicolor ribbon flowing behind each of them.
Headstrong and willful, ten-year-old Arco is too young to fly, his parents (Ferrera and Roeg Sutherland) tell him. It’s a classical interdiction straight out of Vladimir Propp, existing primarily to be obeyed; much of Arco’s plot will follow the traditional story-arc of the hero’s journey, beginning with his violating this essential dictum. When Arco disobeys his parents, steals his older sister’s flight gem, and sneaks off on his first solo flight—a lovingly created, brightly colored rainbow of movement set against a backdrop of watercolor clouds—he meets disaster, crash-landing in his distant past.
It’s there, in 2075, that most of Arco’s narrative action is set. He is rescued by ten-year-old Iris, a bright, intrepid girl who lives, too, with her family—but only sort of. Iris’s world is wracked by environmental havoc. Each family lives under its own dome that protects them from the rampant environmental destruction immediately outside. Wildfires, storms, floods, winds, temperature extremes—all threats we face today—rage outside. We’re reminded that Iris’s future is only 50 years from now: a ten-year-old today could be her grandmother just two generations from now.
Iris’s parents (Ruffalo and Portman) exist for her only as holograms. Work requires that they be elsewhere (work-from-home having apparently failed in this future). Her and her infant brother’s care is outsourced to a competent, benign robot named Mikki, who sees to the children’s care and other domestic duties. Iris, though, is every bit as willful and independent as Arco. A dreamer and doodler, she excuses herself from class for a walk in the woods, where she espies the unlikeliest of sights: a young boy in a brightly colored flightsuit, falling from the sky.
The plot may ring just a bit of E.T. The Extraterrestrial, and like in that film, there are plenty of fish-out-of-water jokes, hot pursuits (mostly involving Ferrell as the lead of a group of pursuers), and moments of longing and bonding. There’s a charming flakiness to the narrative, especially with the Keystone-cops shenanigans of Ferrell’s gang, but there’s plenty of heartfelt sentiment as well. Arco and Iris, though their coming to know and trust each other is slow and gradual, are essentially like-minded free spirits: Arco may be impetuous, but he is a loving son and faithful friend who learns first-hand just how ravaged his earth had been in the past; Iris is like Arco, strong-willed and resourceful, but from her visitor she sees a glimpse of what her future can be.
For its all-star cast of voice talent enlisted for the English dub, none of the big names make much of an impression here. I doubt most English-speaking viewers would even recognize any of them without seeing their names on promotional materials, published reviews, or the end credits. They’re all in minor roles with only a few lines; it’s Arco and Iris’s roles that drive this narrative. Surprisingly, if there is any flaw to be found in Arco, it’s in the tepidity of its voice acting in general. The same can hardly be said for its delightful 2D visual design, though, as Bienvenu and his team (art supervisor Félix de Givry and animator Adam Sillard) create a feast of color. The art is clearly anime-inspired, yet something different from it altogether: lively, kinetic, and memorable. At just under 90 minutes, the film’s editing and music give it a crisp, energetic pace with little lagtime.
When Arco ends, somewhat unsurprisingly where it should, its lead characters have grown: they’ve experienced friendship and loss, but most importantly, come to realize just how far their planet had fallen and how it had grown back to glory in Arco’s future. In times like ours, viewers sorely need reminders that it is humans—future adults like little Iris and her boy-from-the-future friend Arco—that will determine the course of the planet. At its conclusion, without being in the least mawkish or sentimental, Arco hints that that little daydreaming, doodling, class-skipping Iris might just hold the key to a future that saves the planet.
Good on her, and good on Arco.
