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DIRECTED BY: Ugo Bienvenu

FEATURING: Oscar Tresanini, Margot Ringard Oldra, Vincent Macaigne, Louis Garrel, William Lebghil (French); Juliano Krue Valdi, Romy Fay, Will Ferrell, Andy Samberg, Flea (English dub)

PLOT: A boy from the distant future accidentally time-travels to the “past” (2075), where a girl helps him find his way back to his own time.

COMMENTS: Arco boasts two future visions for the price of one. In the title character’s utopian era, humans practice agrarian lives in verdant homesteads above the clouds, time traveling back to the Late Cretaceous period to pick up some exotic plants for supper. Time travel is achieved by activating a diamond while gliding through the sky at terminal velocity in a rainbow suit. The other future, set a mere 50 or so years from now, is more accessible: a world where people communicate via hologram, and robots do all the grunt work (including child-rearing) for busy humans, who somehow manage to remain workaholics despite outsourcing most jobs to automatons.

Worldbuilding—on a level that is recognizable to adults while still being comprehensible and engaging to kids—is Arco‘s superpower. The dual realities make for a refreshing twist on the “stranger in a strange land” plot. Arco has pleasant characters kids can relate to, achored by the touching friendship between Arco and Iris. The feature is well-paced, setting up the central characters and their relationship before notching up the tension in the second half, which features a series of thrilling seat-of-the-pants escapes. Once stuck in 2075, Arco finds himself tailed by three comic-relief buffoons with sharp rainbow shades, bowl haircuts, and uncertain intentions. A misplaced MacGuffin, imminent forest fire, and nurturing but inconsistently functioning nannybot Mikki fill out the plot. It plays out like E.T., minus the Christological baggage, but ending with an unexpected emotional gut-punch whose guiltier implications will hopefully sail over younger viewers’ heads. (It’s good for kids to realize actions have unintended consequences, sure, but this is a heavy trip to lay on a pre-teen).

The 2D animation is not particularly fluid most of the time (save for a bravura pseudo-psychedelic rainbow-flying sequence or two), but the Ghibli-inspired landscapes are impressively detailed. Children should respond well to the character designs, especially Arco’s coat of many colors (which one Letterboxd reviewer wittily described as “an LGBTQ+ allyship hijab.”)

Natalie Portman was instrumental in bringing Ugo Bienvenu’s debut film to  a global audience. She served as a producer and took a small speaking role in the English dub, encouraging other Hollywood talents like Mark Ruffalo and America Ferrara to make similar cameos (along with the more substantial roles for Ferrel and Samberg). Due to their neighborly release dates, Arco is paired in the critical consciousness with the recent French-Belgian animation Little Amélie or the Character of Rain. Both are unique and superior animations offering something more substantial than the usual Hollywood cartoon fare.  Arco is the more appealing of the pair for kids, while Amélie the more philosophical, artistically rendered, and adult-pleasing feature—and also, with its surreal renderings of childhood imagination, the slightly weirder one.

Proposed drinking game: every time a character says “Arco” you say “Polo.” If you’re not in first, take a drink.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…will entrance kids and pre-teen viewers with its just-crude-enough animation style, providing the film with a taste of scrappy ’70s psychedelia and distinctly French character illustration.”–Coleman Spilde, Salon 

(This movie was nominated for review by “Anonymous.” Suggest a weird movie of your own here.)