SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
In a not-too-distant future, in a world where the weather is unpredictable and dangerous and robots raise the children, a young girl named Iris wishes for change. Well, it arrives one day when a boy from the future rides in on a rainbow - which is where the new animated film "Arco" begins.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "ARCO")
ROMY FAY: (As Iris) Do you remember me from the woods? What's your name? Mine's Iris.
JULIANO KRUE VALDI: (As Arco) What year is it?
ROMY: (As Iris) Well, it's 2075.
JULIANO: (As Arco) My parents are going to kill me.
SIMON: Iris and Arco evade captures the elements and waves of robots to help him return to his time. The film is nominated for best animated film at this year's Academy Awards. Ugo Bienvenu is a French illustrator who wrote and directed the film and joins us now from our studios in Culver City. Thanks so much for being with us.
UGO BIENVENU: Thank you.
SIMON: Tell us about this world in the future where Iris lives. It seems peaceful, but there's something darker going on, isn't there?
BIENVENU: I think the world of Iris is our world. You know, I made things that are already in our reality a little bit bolder than what they are now. For example, robots are embodying AI today. And so everything is already here. I just made them a little bit bigger than they are, so I can show where we are going to and ask the question, do we really want to go there?
SIMON: Yeah. A fire is very prominent and threatens everything, doesn't it?
BIENVENU: Yeah. We were finishing the frames of the movie, editing them. And at the same time, there were the fires in LA. And it was so shocking, like, seeing the same images, you know? And also, that's weird because when you are a science fiction writer right now, when you write things, they happen faster than the time it takes you to do them to achieve them. So it's sometimes frightening.
SIMON: Iris' parents are voiced by Mark Ruffalo and Natalie Portman in the English language version. Natalie Portman also co-produced the film. The parents appear as holograms nightly because they're living away from home as they pursue their jobs during the week. And a robot nanny named Mikki cares for the children.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "ARCO")
ROMY: (As Iris) Mikki.
MARK RUFFALO AND NATALIE PORTMAN: (As Mikki) I was starting to get seriously worried.
ROMY: (As Iris) He fainted.
RUFFALO AND PORTMAN: (As Mikki) We'll have to treat it right away, or else he'll be left with a very bad scar. Go get me the first aid kit, would you please?
ROMY: (As Iris) Where is it?
RUFFALO AND PORTMAN: (As Mikki) In the bathroom upstairs, top drawer, under the sink.
SIMON: Tell us about Mikki. I loved Mikki. I found Mikki the moral center of the film.
BIENVENU: Yeah. I draw Mikki since more than 10 years now. He's in all my books. He's in a lot of music videos I did. And he's allowing me to define what makes us humans. And I think, like fiction, first of all, is made to define what makes us humans. And I think now because of technology - because of everything - the question is more relevant than ever. And I think at the end of the day, the most simple definition of what makes us humans is our ability to say, this is important for me. And I think the contrast seeing a machine in the movie saying, you're important to me, makes it more obvious, you know.
SIMON: Mikki provides - I can't believe I'm saying this - unconditional love.
BIENVENU: Yeah, because he's programmed to, and he's achieving his program. But is it real love? This is also the question that the movie asks. The movie also asks the questions - says in a way that we're living now in an era where things - actual presence of things - is replaced by their image. And I think this is a really dangerous path we're going to, you know?
SIMON: Arco, of course, as we mentioned, is from the future. And at first blush, it seems a little utopian - but he told us that the Earth is resting. What does that mean?
BIENVENU: My granddad was - how do you say, farm guy? He grew up in a farm, you know, and my grandmother, too. And in France - I don't know if you do it here, but you cut your land in three different spaces. You were working on two of them and leaving the third rest, and they call it the fallow. And I was like, this idea always was important in my head. And, in fact, I think now that the Earth is exhausted of us, you know. She's tired of being so used by humans, and maybe we have to leave her a little bit of rest. So that was the main - the first idea. And also, I wanted to imagine something utopic, you know?
SIMON: Yeah.
BIENVENU: And to me, the world of Arco is not - I don't necessarily say that this is where we should go, but it's something that is here just to say, hey, we can imagine something else. It's just a platform for the audience to say, let's imagine a better world, you know, and the world that fits us better.
SIMON: Let me ask you about - (laughter) - three guys who appear in the film. They're preoccupied with the rainbow trails in the sky, and they want to find Arco - voiced in the English-language version by Will Ferrell, Andy Samberg and Flea from Red Hot Chili Peppers. Here they are tracking Arco in the woods.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "ARCO")
ANDY SAMBERG AND WILL FERRELL: (As Stewie) Let me see.
WILL FERRELL: (As Dougie) I got it, too.
FLEA: (As Frankie) Holy smokes.
ANDY SAMBERG: (As Stewie) We need to split up and look, all right?
FERRELL: (As Dougie) OK. OK.
SAMBERG: (As Stewie) Dougie.
FERRELL: (As Dougie) Yeah?
SAMBERG: (As Stewie) You go north.
FERRELL: (As Dougie) All right.
SAMBERG: (As Stewie) And Frankie and me, we'll go south...
FERRELL: (As Dougie) Wait. Hold on a second, hold - really? Why am I the one all alone?
SAMBERG: (As Stewie) Stop thinking it's all about you.
SIMON: They're a little hard to take at first, but they eventually realize they're onto something important, don't they?
BIENVENU: Yeah. Because, in fact, they saw something when they were kids and they want to prove the world they're right, but they are stuck in the moment they saw the thing, you know? So they kind of not grew up, and they move like children. They act like children. And it was so funny to draw, so funny to play, you know? And they were really toys for me and for all my team. So it was - yeah, it's really important characters to me.
SIMON: Wow. I want to ask you about adults in the movie. They seem to wear some kind of tech glasses...
BIENVENU: Yeah.
SIMON: ...All the time. And, of course, the children don't. Is that some sort of observation about how children see the world?
BIENVENU: In fact, I use a lot of the glasses in my work since a lot of time. It's because also, I feel like we're getting in a world of indifference, you know, in which we don't look at each other anymore, and we are super connected and at the same time disconnected. But I think it cuts ourselves from - you know, from the world and from relationship to human beings. And in fact, the movie talks about that, too - about what is being here and human now. It's being - and what are we leaving behind us in order to evolve? And what are we leaving behind us of our humanity, you know? And for me, every time a new technology arrives, we really have to ask ourselves, what are we leaving behind us?
SIMON: Arco arrives - well, flies through the sky, and he arrives in a rainbow cloak - kind of rides a rainbow. Does that put hope into our skies, even in dark times?
BIENVENU: Well, I think rainbows always have been the sign of hope, you know, even, like, 20,000 years ago. Rainbows since more than 10 years are in my work. It's the link between the Earth and something bigger than us, you know. And it's a thing that it's complicated to explain. Even if we know how it works, you know, with the rain and the sun and - it's complicated, so it's still a little bit magical.
SIMON: Ugo Bienvenu. His new film, "Arco," is in theaters now. Thank you so much for being with us.
BIENVENU: Thank you so much.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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