TIFF 2025: Scarlet, Arco, Little Amélie or the character of the rain | Festivals and awards

One of the most buzzing titles on the festivals of last year was “Flow”, which would win the Oscar for the best animated feature film. Given the relatively superficial offers of major studios this year (sorry the fans “Elio”), it seems very possible that the winner of this year can also come from the holiday circuit – either this or the phenomenon which is “Kpop Demon Hunters”. Honestly, this could be one of the three international productions of this dispatch, all with their own notable qualities, although I would say that we work notably better than the others.

The highest profile of the group probably belongs to Mamoru Hosoda “Scarlet,” The last of the beloved director of “Belle”, “Wolf Children”, “Summer Wars” and many others. Her 2018 “Mirai” film was a surprising nominated from the Oscars, and her last is another sumptuous production, herself part of a bizarre trend this year in that William Shakespeare Hamlet reflected in three productions: a modern adaptation featuring Rice Ahmed, the “Hamnet” of Chloé Zhao, and this fantastic version on a gender scale of the tale. Hosoda loses his way in an intermediate section which drags after a dynamic opening act, but he ends up arriving at some of the strongest images of his career in what becomes a study of forgiveness against revenge.

The configuration is familiar to the source: the father of a child is murdered by his uncle Claudius. As anyone who saw what Hosoda has done to a legend with “beautiful” could expect, the artist takes an acute turn after this configuration. What if Claudius obtained the top and poisoned the hamlet / Scarlet before being able to meet his own fate?

Scarlet finds himself in a sort of purgatory, running against time to find his way to Claudius while she takes revenge on the men who held the sword who killed her father. In this life after death, she meets a doctor named Hijiri, someone who seems to have met Scarlet through time and space after a stab in the streets of Japan in modern times. Hijiri and Scarlet make a plot To talk about their position, what they have to do and what they feel, and the gray landscape of Hosoda’s vision makes dialogue dull and on the nose a little creaky.

However, “Scarlet” goes as fascinating when her heroine finally achieves her goal and begins to wonder what everything is worth and what she really wants. There is an image in particular while Claudius begs the glory he does not deserve which is one of the best of the host. Even if “Scarlet” ends up feeling as a hospital minor, it will always be major for her faithful fans.

Ugo Bienvenu is perhaps a French animator, but he is clearly inspired by people like Hosoda, and, even more, the craftsmen of the Ghibli studio. Beans “Arco” First in Cannes to Strong Buzz and has now received an English dub which includes vocal work from Natalie Portman, Mark Ruffalo, Andy Samberg, Flea, and more. He is obviously linked to the play book by Hayao Miyazaki in his mixture of fantasy, science fiction and problems of a dying planet, but I found him captivating, a reminder that even if the Master Miyazaki is towards the end of his career, his influence would overcome the form for the generations.

Arco is a boy who comes from a future so far that time trips have been developed, using rainbow to return to hundreds of years (a very early ghobli concept if I have never heard one). In a first scene, he expresses the jealousy that his parents can see what the dinosaurs really looked like – he is only 10 years old and you must be 12 years old to set up the rainbow – and therefore he decides to make a trip alone, landing in 2075, where Benvenu’s real vision of the future takes place. In a world that looks a little more like ours, three figures are trying to pursue Arco, while it befriends a lonely girl whose parents appear only as holograms that she is taken over by the family robot.

When the filmmakers try to reproduce Ghibli, they often stand out from Leaden and crushed – “Mononoke” made too many people to think that Hayao had never had a sense of humor – it is therefore pleasant to see a filmmaker who values ​​fantasy as much as the message. “Arco” is a family adventure film, a story of two children who are there for each other in a way that the adults around them were never. It’s a bit thin on the plot, but, like “Scarlet”, he lands in a moving place, a recall of what really matters now, and many years in the future: our connections with each other and the planet.

Finally, there is the sweet “Little Amélie or the character of the rain”, “ Based on Amélie Nothomb’s novel about a three -year -old child who mainly develops the much older language and perspective. Apparently, based on a Japanese belief that children are like gods at this age, it is a dizzying mixture of cultures and mythology. When you are three years old, you think you are the center of the universe. What if you are?

The interculture perspective of an eloquent Belgian girl living in Japan is the most interesting thing of this poetic journey. Even the title refers to this mixture with the Japanese character for Amélie, which also means rain. Once again, the protagonists of the children of Miyazaki, as well as more messages on our connection with the planet, feel like inspirations, but it looks more like French painters than the aesthetics of Ghibli.

The visuals amplify the themes of wonder in the natural world of ammelia in a way that is at the beginning captivating but becomes a little repetitive because the film of Nothomb feels lighter than the other two in this dispatch. “Little Amélie” is undeniably sweet in a way that makes it difficult not to love, but it is also a reminder that the way in which Miyazaki gives a children’s agency in a way that seems true can be difficult to reproduce.