This French animated film, which was nominated for an Oscar, is set in two time periods, 2075 and 900 years later. The world of 2075 is carefully extrapolated from the world we live in now, a place of deadly downpours punctuated by raging wildfires. The inhabitants of the suburban anywhere depicted live in regular homes protected by retractable transparent bubbles, and adults are forced to work in cities and visit their children through holographic projections, while the everyday needs of those children are tended to by robot servants who have been programmed to sacrifice everything for their charges. We experience this world through the eyes of a little girl named Iris, a withdrawn child who has never adjusted to her situation despite the material comforts on hand, and one day while cutting class she sees a rainbow in the distance, but instead of the arc that such an apparition usually follows, the rainbow is a squiggly trajectory. When she traces it to its source she finds a boy her own age in a colorful rainbow suit. Actually, we’ve already met this boy, Arco. He’s from the future, where people live in the clouds and can talk to the birds and time travel, except that the law prohibits children from time traveling until they are 12, a rule Arco resents and so one night he borrows his sister’s time travel costume and the crystal used to fuel it and tries it out, hoping to go back in time to see some dinosaurs, but ends up in 2075 instead.

The notion that Arco comes from a future where the serious problems of 2075 have all been solved gives the movie an odd kind of tension, since it would seem to be the worst possible year Arco could visit (though the implication is that things will get worse before they get better). And for what it’s worth, the writer-director, Ugo Bienvenu, has fashioned his movie as a straightforward adventure tale, with Iris desperately trying to help her new friend return to his world and his family. In his fall from the sky, Arco has lost the crystal, which is soon found by a trio of awkward, nerdy UFO investigators who think they’ve stumbled upon an alien life form, though for a while at least Iris leads them on a wild goose chase. Interestingly, there are no overtly evil elements in the movie—no dastardly villain out to claim the crystal for himself or capitalist/authoritarian juggernaut hunting Arco for whatever reason. The conflict springs completely from the contrast between the two children’s respective experiences. Iris is basically a neglected child, and it’s suggested, especially through her friendship with her classmate Clifford, who has a crush on her and becomes jealous of Arco (though in the end he does what’s right and helps him), that her situation isn’t unique. Arco, on the other hand, is from a close, loving household and a place where he doesn’t have to worry that his house will burn down the next day or get swept away in a flood. 

As an adventure Arco moves swiftly and suspensefully, and though it isn’t spoiling anything to say that there’s a happy ending, it’s a qualified happy ending as a result of Arco’s mischievous act, one that we assume he will always regret because he can never undo it. It’s an appropriately bittersweet conclusion to a marvelously inventive tale that uses science fiction in a responsible way—as a means of showing us where we are headed and that it still isn’t too late to change things. 

In French with Japanese subtitles and Japanese dubbed versions. Now playing in Tokyo at Toho Cinemas Nihonbashi (050-6868-5060), Toho Cinemas Hibiya (050-6868-5068), Toho Cinemas Shinjuku (050-6868-5063), Cinemart Shinjuku (03-5369-2831), Human Trust Cinema Shibuya (03-5468-5551).

Arco home page in Japanese

photo (c) 2025 Remembers/mountainA/France 3 Cinema