French director Ugo Bienvenue’s feature length debut Arco imagines a distant future where humans have moved up to live on sky-high platforms amidst the clouds (allowing Earth to rest a bit). They’ve also acquired the ability to rainbowtravel through time. But as this practice is obviously not without risk, children have to wait until they’re twelve years old before they can put on the poncho-esque rainbowsuit and take their first flight. Driven by immense curiosity (and a pinch of juvenile impatience), young Arco (Oscar Tresanini) leaves his bedroom in the middle of the night and jumps right off the edge of where he lives with his family. However, he hasn’t quite mastered the skill yet, and as such finds himself plummeting through the clouds. He starts panicking as the velocity causes the cloth to cover his face and next thing he knows Arco is crashlanding in the distant past (the year 2075) where Iris (Margot Ringard Oldra), a young girl about his age, notices a rainbow in the sky with a somewhat peculiar trajectory. She runs to where it lands, encounters Arco and brings him back home where her household robot Mikki takes care of him. Together they will try and find a way to get Arco back home.
So that opening sequence is pretty amazing but this base concept sort of takes a back seat through the middle part of the film as we learn more about Iris’ family situation and a mysterious trio of goofballs particularly interested in Arco’s predicament. It’s all tied up quite remarkably well, though and ends up being one of the most adorable and wildly imaginative films I’ve seen this year. The character work is pretty solid across the board with the aforementioned robot providing some truly poignant moments (I mean, that cave drawing scene is just… ) while the aforementioned trio gets most of the laughs but there are also a couple of very sweet moments with Iris’ friend Clifford (you’ll see) and to be honest, even the baby is genuinely a great character. In addition, it’s all presented in a super cool almost dreamlike visual style that makes for some truly wonderous imagery (those immersive class rooms, the raging wildfire, that backlit shot of Arco on the roof with all the birds). Quite stunning indeed.
Now, I knew I was going to see an animated sci-fi epic but other than that I hadn’t read much about Arco prior to attending this screening at Film Fest Gent (my first of the year). When I entered the theatre, I noticed most of the crowd was made up of young children (and their parents) and I suspected I might have walked into a something for which I wasn’t necessarily the target audience. This notion was not incorrect – Arco is aimed at children primarily -but I shan’t pretend my dusty adult self didn’t totally relish this as well. What an amazing experience it must be to see this through children’s eyes, though. Oh, how I wish I had taken my kids to discover this gem along with me but alas. ‘t Was a school night. You can bet your ass I’m dragging them to the movies at soon as this releases and I suggest you do the same.
Dragged them to the movies last weekend ^^p