Language: English and a little Italian
What a wonderful thing it is to have friends in your life. Friends who guard your secrets like they are their own, stand by the other despite their better judgement, follow each other into the unknown, believing that they will be able to face it all – together. Pixar’s Luca is precisely an ode to that, and much more.
Hidden in an idyllic setting of the Italian hamlet of Portorosso, Enrico Casarosa’s animated feature is all our childhood daydreams packaged into an hour and a half of pure animated fun. The kind of daydreams that would thrust our imagination into hours of adventure-building while the boring drone of a certain class teacher went on in a parallel world.
With multiple colour-spurts of Italian scenes, the film presents the country’s magnificent aesthetic. Cobblestoned streets wind their way into squiggly lanes of tall houses packed one after the other; noisy neighbours pour out into the open plaza for afternoon tété-a-tétés with friends, and children call out to each other for a round of street soccer.
Underwater, the sea monsters live an equally quaint life, involved in herding sheeplike fish and involved in cultivation of kelp. The only fear that looms large is that of the land, with land-dwellers decorating their houses and shops with abhorrent paintings and structures of men killing ocean folks.
Drawing stark parallels to films like Finding Nemo, Brave and the like, Luca’s eponymous protagonist (played by Jacob Tremblay) is a “sea monster”, living under the surveillance of his protective mother and directionless father (Maya Rudolph and Jim Gaffigan). The reason behind their vigilance? Luca might get discovered by humans. Sea monsters, we’re shown, can change form into humans on land, but switch back immediately, when in contact with water.
But Luca’s fears are short-lived after fellow monster Alberto (Jack Dylan Grazer) pulls him (literally) into the world of air, humans and gravity. They live their days of Huck Finn and Joe Harper, befriending the town’s feisty young local Giulia (Emma Berman). The three youngsters band up to participate in Portorosso’s annual triathlon and defeat reigning champion and town bully Ercole Visconti (Saverio Raimondo).
Through these ups and downs, runs Luca’s narrative. That Pixar has turned an inclusive bend is evident with productions like these. Above and beyond its Disney, PG-13 feel-goodness, Luca is also about othering and self-revelation.
A deep narrative subtext runs through the film in its portrayal of the obvious divide between land and sea. The townsfolk’s aggressive stand against marine monsters spotlights the concept of privilege and the lack of it. But in Casarosa's world, the sentiments are reciprocated with the sea-dwellers and their unabashed dislike for humans. Even in its climactic high, the film presents the mother’s change of heart to be just enough but never completely rid of her phobia against mankind. She’s proud that her son could “show it to those humans,” when Luca helps win the triathlon and consequently carves a space for the sea monsters in the heart of some Portorosso locals.
The film also delves deep into the dynamic between Alberto and Luca. On the announcement of its release, Luca was compared incessantly with Call Me by Your Name (by the director who, in fact, shares the protagonist’s name). Though the adolescent world of Pixar never draws references to sexualising their relationship, their togetherness is similar in its co-dependency and need to escape reality.
But the visual extravaganza aside, Luca’s only drawback lies in its keen attempt to mean something. The film’s main narrative tears away from becoming authentic by providing audiences with half-baked plot settings and character backgrounds.
We’re never told or made to witness the tumultuous history between land and seas monsters that led to this great chasm.
We aren’t invited into the characters’ personal worlds to understand why they are the way they are. Alberto vaguely mentions an errant father who abandoned him for another life, but that is not followed by any visual reference. Luca’s mother’s dread for the world above; Ercole’s hatred for Giulia or even the deep sense of isolation that lies beneath his atrocious behaviour towards fellow teens; Luca’s abrupt change of heart when he wishes to begin school rather than whizz around Italian cities in a Vespa - nothing is ever explored or explained – much like Hercule Poirot basing his solutions on pure “instincts”.
This may also be the aftermath of a production conglomerate trying too hard to be progressive and ‘woke’ at the cost of losing narrative dimensionality that their earlier works may have provided.
But you never feel amply dissatisfied with these drawbacks to shun off your watching experience as forgettable.
Luca enamours you into its world of Italian scenic tableaus; a world where friends, family and togetherness is celebrated with hot bowls of penne, linguini, or fettuccini pasta and a chilled glass of lemonade.
Luca streams on Disney+ Hotstar Premium.
Rating: ****
source https://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/luca-movie-review-pixars-latest-is-a-wholesome-concoction-of-friendship-self-realisation-and-togetherness-9733281.html
