Look up and make a wish
First we have the far future. People live on platforms above the clouds, where they practice subsistence farming. With the help of multicolored robes adorned with pretty diamonds, they routinely travel to the prehistoric past to recover samples of usable species; there are hints that something caused an ecological catastrophe that made the surface unlivable. The family we follow has a girl and a boy, but the boy, Arco, is still too young to join the time-traveling expeditions. Because it’s a human universal, even after the end of civilization, that kids have an instinct for getting in trouble, the boy steals a suit and attempts a time jump on his own. As can be expected, he gets lost, and thus we have a movie.
Then we have the not too far future. The environment is still in the middle of falling apart; one day can bring a killer hurricane and the next a massive forest fire, and the solution of rich people is to have retractable glass domes built around their houses. That way you can have your dinner in peace while nature rages outside. The family we follow in this era has a preteen girl, a baby boy and a robot nanny. The parents are perpetually busy at work in some other city, and the girl, Iris, is tired of feeling lonely. So fate fulfills her wishes one day, when Arco crash-lands in her neighborhood.
The plot of the French animated film Arco brings to mind E.T., with the strange visitor hiding in a child’s house until they can return to their parents. The main difference in this case is that Iris and Arco can talk to each other. She’s excited about showing him all the cool things of her modern life, but he’s rather guarded about how much of his time she can be allowed to know. This dynamic only gets a brief time to develop before we have adult authorities, mysterious stalkers and natural disasters converging to get in the way of this adorable pair.
A curious contrast to the beauty of this moment in the kids’ lives is the stunted development of the trio of stalkers who jump out of nowhere to find Arco and obtain proof that time travel is real. They’re introduced as antagonists, but soon enough their clumsiness neutralizes any threat they may pose, and they spend the rest of the movie looking goofy and obstructing our heroes’ quest for no good reason. I hear many viewers enjoyed these characters; I found them mostly annoying.
One feature that stands out about the overall tone of Arco is how obviously it’s not an American or Japanese cartoon. It’s far too common for children in American cartoons to be overly expressive of their emotions, whereas children in Japanese cartoons can sometimes speak with such deep introspection that believability is stretched. The two lead children in Arco come off as more relaxed in their inner life, which makes the stakes feel starker later, when it’s time to panic. The naturality with which they let themselves feel their emotions ends up being key to the gradual way these two start falling in love without having a clue of what romance is.
There’s an element of irony in the suggestion that Arco’s description of the post-disaster world will inspire Iris to get to work to mitigate the disaster that in her time is still ongoing. But her success is more visible in the personal sphere. Her family life is strained because she almost never gets to see her parents, who work a lot to afford the storm-proof house where she lives. When one looks at the family Arco comes from, and the magnitude of the effort it takes for his parents to find him, the implication is that Iris changed a society where parents rarely spend time with their kids into a society where parents move heaven and earth to see them. This side of the story is more impactful than any environmentalist lesson that could be read in the plot. Viewers probably already know the dangers that surround us, so Arco can just show the full extent of the climate crisis without turning preachy; the images suffice.
The gorgeous animation and the careful balancing of tension and humor highlight the small tragedy at the core of the story: two children having a wonderful, one-in-a-lifetime experience whose full meaning they can’t yet grasp. They just know something special is happening to them, and they don’t have a name for it, and it will take them decades of growth to appreciate those fleeting days of magic. The part of the movie’s ending that is happy gives both Iris and Arco a blunt reminder of the cruelty of time, a hard truth that not even time travel can fix. That’s the thing about growing up: if it tastes bittersweet, you’re doing it right.
Nerd Coefficient: 9/10.
POSTED BY: Arturo Serrano, multiclass Trekkie/Whovian/Moonie/Miraculer, accumulating experience points for still more obsessions.
