{"id":107019,"date":"2025-05-16T19:04:15","date_gmt":"2025-05-16T19:04:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/107019\/"},"modified":"2025-05-16T19:04:15","modified_gmt":"2025-05-16T19:04:15","slug":"animated-film-is-frances-answer-to-ghibli","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/107019\/","title":{"rendered":"Animated Film Is France’s Answer to Ghibli"},"content":{"rendered":"

There\u2019s one particular journey the makers of \u201cArco<\/a>,\u201d a soulful animated movie premiering in the Special Screenings section of Cannes 2025, are hoping to follow, whether they say it or not. The journey of \u201cFlow.\u201d<\/p>\n

That animated triumph premiered to raves at Cannes in 2024<\/a> and slowly built momentum until finally winning the Best Animated Feature Oscar<\/a> earlier this year. For all Cannes represents to global cinema, it had never been a particularly fecund environment for animation<\/a>: The festival used to play host to splashy premieres for blockbuster hits such as \u201cShrek 2\u201d and \u201cBee Movie,\u201d not eventual Academy Award winners. \u201cFlow\u201d changed all that. What would Cannes do for animation next?<\/p>\n

\"'Love,<\/a> \"Joaquin<\/a> <\/p>\n

This writer is no Oscar prognosticator, but it seems \u201cArco\u201d is unlikely to repeat that triumph. Not that it isn\u2019t a worthy film<\/a> \u2014\u00a0though not as worthy as the wordlessly universal \u201cFlow,\u201d which, at times, truly feels like a movie that\u2019s never been made before \u2014\u00a0but the path that movie took feels almost unreplicatable.<\/p>\n

For one, \u201cArco,\u201d with its copious French dialogue and unmistakably Gallic sensibility (even if dubs into other languages do eventually happen) simply doesn\u2019t have the borderless resonance. For another, it simply wears its influences on its cinematic sleeve a little too readily: A little bit of \u201cPeter Pan,\u201d \u201cE.T.,\u201d Studio Ghibli, even \u201cStar Trek\u201d \u2014\u00a0with director Ugo Bienvenu<\/a>\u2018s stated aim of presenting a positive, hopeful vision of the future in \u201cArco,\u201d and the colorful palette with which he\u2019s realized it, Roddenberry Entertainment should seriously consider coming onboard as producing partners for the U.S. release. It\u2019s that level of optimistic.<\/p>\n

As Bienvenu\u2019s first feature, \u201cArco\u201d is undoubtedly a promising start for a budding auteur who\u2019s been toiling away at short films, music videos, graphic novels, and short animations for Herm\u00e8s. One of his illustrations for the French luxury house became a popular scarf called \u201cWow!\u201d which gave a comic book sensibility to the equestrian images associated with the brand. He has an eye for detail that calls to mind Ghibli, as well as the great French artist Jean Giraud, known to the world as M\u0153bius. But Bienvenu embraces an explosion of color that\u2019s all his own.<\/p>\n

\u201cArco\u201d introduces us to a young boy of 10 or 11 living in a far future where humanity now resides among the clouds on \u201cJetsons\u201d-like platforms on stilts. At a certain point, the population of Earth realized that a \u201cGreat Fallow\u201d needed to happen, that the surface of the planet needed to rest. We meet Arco himself giving feed to chickens and pouring food in a trough for pigs. This may be an extremely advanced civilization he\u2019s part of, but it\u2019s also back to basics. And soon, we discover that people, once they turn the age of 12, don a rainbow cloak with a special light-refracting diamond, and use the colorful garment to fly through the air \u2014\u00a0and go back in time. <\/p>\n

Arco isn\u2019t old enough yet to fly, but that isn\u2019t going to stop him. He steals his sister\u2019s cloak while the rest of the family is sleeping and jumps off the edge of the platform.<\/p>\n

After that, we\u2019re introduced to a raven-haired girl of about the same age named Iris. She\u2019s living on the ground in a suburban community where her primary caregiver is a robot named Mikki, and bubble-like shields pop up over everyone\u2019s homes when the climate-change-fueled thunderstorms wreak havoc or devastating wildfires break out. Her parents, consumed with work, are never even home and communicate with Iris merely by \u201cStar Wars\u201d-style blue-grain holograms. Iris has a caring companion in Mikki \u2014 she asks him to play cowboy and Captain Hook, and he obliges \u2014 but she still dreams of something more fulfilling. And into her life drops Arco.<\/p>\n

Yes, Iris is living in Arco\u2019s past even if it\u2019s our future. The year for her is 2075, and the environmentally ravaged earth she inhabits is definitely a place that needs a \u201cGreat Fallow.\u201d The story from there becomes a tad predictable: Arco is a fish out of water, Iris quickly becomes his devoted friend, a misunderstanding causes them to go on the run. And some choices don\u2019t quite work, like the monochromatically-attired, turtleneck-wearing identical triplets who are tracking Arco \u2014\u00a0having before seen visitors from the future like him, who fly in the sky and leave rainbow trails behind them, the brothers are determined to prove their existence \u2014 and are in the story as just a particularly French kind of comic relief. <\/p>\n

As in any story like this, Iris is both trying to help Arco get home, and also doesn\u2019t really want him to leave. But Bienvenu comes up with a stirring ending, one so emotional it almost paves over the bumps in the narrative road that got us there. But it\u2019s undoubtedly a bit of connecting the dots to get to that ending, something genuinely soulful that\u2019s a bit reduced because of a plot that just went from Point A to Point B.<\/p>\n

Still, much of the film is absolute retina candy. Like \u201cFlow\u201d director Gints Zilbalodis, Bienvenu built his studio around recent graduates of top animation schools, and there is a youthful energy pointing to new possibilities for the medium. He also has a unique idea animating his entire vision: Why do visions of the future have to be uniformly grim? Can\u2019t they be full of wonder also? That said, it\u2019s important to stay a bit clear-eyed about the way things are, too. Like Gene Roddenberry, Bienvenu is imagining a hopeful far-future, and a pretty miserable near-future that\u2019s a continuation of our miserable present (oh yeah, the \u201cStar Trek\u201d creator foretold that the 21st century would be rough<\/a>). <\/p>\n

The path ahead may be full of peril, but hope might still wait on the other side of that rainbow. And Bienvenu certainly gives us hope that animation can continue to be a vessel for epic visions and intimate musings, and can be one of the most deeply personal forms of cinematic expression there is. The artistic intentions couldn\u2019t be better. Maybe with the next film, the ability to better realize them will follow.<\/p>\n

Grade: B-<\/p>\n

\u201cArco\u201d premiered at the 2025\u00a0Cannes<\/a>\u00a0Film Festival. It is currently seeking U.S. distribution.<\/p>\n

Want to stay up to date on IndieWire\u2019s film\u00a0reviews<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0and critical thoughts?\u00a0Subscribe here<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0to our newly launched newsletter, In Review by David Ehrlich, in which our Chief Film Critic and Head Reviews Editor rounds up the best new reviews and streaming picks along with some exclusive musings \u2014\u00a0all only available to subscribers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There\u2019s one particular journey the makers of \u201cArco,\u201d a soulful animated movie premiering in the Special Screenings section…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":107020,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5309],"tags":[32015,48960,5839,2000,299,3063,36,48961],"class_list":{"0":"post-107019","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-france","8":"tag-animation","9":"tag-arco","10":"tag-cannes","11":"tag-eu","12":"tag-europe","13":"tag-film","14":"tag-france","15":"tag-ugo-bienvenu"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114519072633568843","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107019","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=107019"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107019\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/107020"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=107019"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=107019"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=107019"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}