Key Highlights
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- Childlike wonder meets climate devastation in the modestly realized French animated film “Arco,” a fantasy of the future that centers on the innocent adventurousness of kids as a hopeful reality, still.
- (Another hopeful reality for “Arco” is its recent Oscar nomination as of Thursday morning.)While animator Ugo Bienvenu’s debut feature, written with Félix De Givry, openly aspires to the playful awe of Spielberg and classic stories such as “Peter Pan,” it also feels of a piece with the unadorned postwar poignancy of René Clément’s “Forbidden Games” and the animated Japanese tale “Grave of the Fireflies.” The titular boy (voiced in this English-dubbed version by Juliano Valdi) is who we first meet: a lively 10-year-old tending to chickens and pigs at a verdant family home suspended above the clouds on a giant platform.
- Soon his parents and older sister arrive from the air, trailing rainbows behind their colorful capes.
- They’ve just flown in from a trip to the time of dinosaurs, bringing back flora to add to their sustainable lifestyles.
