There’s quite a bit of time travel in “Arco,” Ugo Bievenu’s endearing animated sci-fi tale in which its titular 12-year-old arrives from the future, curious to see what the world looked like thousand years before. But the film is a throwback in other ways when surely Bienvenu and co-writer Felix de Givry came of age when adventures such as “The Neverending Story” and “The Goonies” were in heavy rotation and feels fresh now that there are fewer out there made with such skill and imagination. Bienvenu may be making his feature debut on the animated epic after building a career first as a graphic artist, but it’s clear he already has something that can’t be taught in delivering a film that can be enjoyed by the whole family, respectful of an audience’s intelligence at any age.
Arco (voiced by Oscar Tresanini) may be centuries away from contemporary time in the film, but the film itself takes place slightly down the road from current times as well in 2075 where robots are employed to handle domestic duties while the working class can be two places at once, thanks to holograms that allows for everyone to sit down together as a family for dinner, even if the adults can’t make it home from their jobs. Even though the 10-year-old Iris (Margot Ringard Oldra) can’t complain that her parents are absent exactly, she can tire of the one-way relationship she has with her infant brother Peter and the limited conversation she can make with the family’s automaton Mikki (Alma Jodorowsky and Swann Arlaud), which leads to welcoming Arco with open arms when he falls from the sky, catching her eye with the rainbow trail he leaves behind him. Not knowing where to land is indicative of the amount of thought Arco put into putting on his parents’ travel gear, regularly dipping into the past to shop for groceries and other items as if they were headed to the local supermarket, but while his sister is old enough in her mid-teens to suit up, Arco is prevented from joining them and decides one night to satisfy his curiosity by sneaking out of the house.
When circumstance has essentially made orphans out of both Iris and Arco, they become fast friends and set about trying to get Arco back home, a place that isn’t only eons away, but physically somewhere hovering over the earth when the environment has become unsuitable for human life. Bienvenu never overstates the ravages of climate change, but it becomes a fascinating part of the landscape both on earth in its 2075 form and in the year 3000 where tall platforms on which plants grow as they would curl around trellises create a different kind of urban sprawl after rising sea levels have forced the population to think vertically. Certainly growing up inside hermetically sealed domes has had an impact on Iris and Arco even without being too young to know what life was like before, and while it’s no way to spend life, the director does make the world well worth spending an hour-and-a half inside with its bold colors and charming decorative touches that reflect a human touch amidst technologically advanced times, such as sprinklers that look like clapping hands and a heart-shaped power outlet for Mikki.
“Arco” can flirt with being too sweet for its own good, barely mustering up more a half-hearted attempt at villains in the form of three top-to-toe color-coded men (Vincent Macaigne, Louis Garrel and William Lebghil) that give Arco and Iris chase, meant more for comic relief than as a menace. (Still, this results in one of the more inventive centerpiece sequences this side of Joe Dante’s delightful romp through the Louvre in “Looney Tunes: Back in Action” when it leads to a mutlidimensional race through history.) But they aren’t needed when Bienvenu and de Givry are more interested in the more abstract adversary of time as the parents of both Iris and Arco would like more with their children and the kids look to close the gap that prevents Arco’s safe return, and beyond what budget-breaking exploits can be afforded by animation rather than live-action, the 2D hand-drawn style of the film has additional poignance when it has a nostalgic warmth to it while presenting such a vibrant tomorrow. Fittingly, “Arco” culminates in a moving finale where there’s as much value in history as much as thinking ahead when it comes to progress and for that reason and more, makes a strong case for being an all-timer.
“Arco” will screen again at the Cannes Film Festival as part of the Special Screenings section at Le Cineum Salle 3 at 9:15 am on May 17th and at 5 pm at May 24th.