Film reviews: Elio | Red Path

Red Path ★★★★

Elio is one of those Pixar movies that doesn't feel like a Pixar movie. This is more of a jolt than you might think. After 30 years and almost as many joyful feature films (you don't have to count Cars 2 if you don't want to), the Pixar brand and its magic touch is easy to identify: stories that are more original than those from other family-friendly competitors, with wilder invention, richer playfulness and deft storytelling that is ambitious and slyly comic.

It's hard to maintain that level of originality over the long haul, and lately Pixar has had its ups and downs. Behind the scenes, Elio has a history that suggests corporate nervousness, with its release date pushed back and both its original director, Adrian Molina, and one of its voiceover stars, America Ferrera, replaced. Elio is now led by Domee Shi and Madeline Sharafian (Turning Red).

Orphaned as a child, Elio (voiced by Yonas Kibreab) yearns to find his place in the universe, and concludes that the answer lies far from Earth, after stumbling across a museum exhibit about the Voyager satellite at an air force base where his Aunt Olga (Zoe Saldana) works. Olga has put her dreams of becoming an astronaut on hold to care for her nephew. Still, paradoxically, Elio is now obsessed with space travel and desperately seeks aliens to whisk him off across the cosmos, spending hours lying on the beach with a message in the sand that pleads, “Aliens, please abduct me.”

Thanks to a US military computer system surprisingly low on passwords and confirmation requirements, Elio finally gets his wish and is whisked off to a United Nations of aliens who make up the “Communiverse.” The aliens have mistaken Elio for the leader of Earth, which isn’t a hugely consequential error until Elio volunteers to negotiate on behalf of the Communiverse with an aggressive alien named Lord Grigon (Brad Garrett), who has more than his share of teeth, eyes, armaments, and barely-concealed insecurities about parenting.

Meanwhile, back on Earth, Olga has not realised her nephew is missing, thanks to a clone cooked up by the Communiverse in much the same way that some of us make microwave chocolate mug cake. However, while Elio’s clone is an exact physical match, the pleasure it takes in gardening, commiserating with neighbours about back pain and low-cholesterol recipes for macaroni cheese begins to arouse her suspicion.

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There’s much to delight in Elio: the creative alien designs and Galactic Assembly scenes are inventive, there are nods to classic sci-fi favourites that will please space nerds, it is often funny, and there’s a nicely-evolved friendship between Elio and Lord Grigon’s son Glordon (Remy Edgerly), a spaceworm who has no interest in being like his warlord father and who may be key to defusing an extra-terrestrial stand-off.

Yet while the film’s sentiments are hard-earned and pack an emotional punch, the narrative is built on predictable bones of heroes' journeys and homilies. Elio clearly hopes to resonate with those facing loneliness, just as Inside Out 2 did for those coping with anxiety, but while its messages about being yourself and finding connection are wholesome, tidy, and should feel fresh to young audiences, part of the thrill of seeing a Pixar film as an adult, with or without accompanying children, has been the sense that their films offered something extra: a work with deeper soul than even most grown-up films could muster. Elio is only disappointing if you expect the highest quality from what we like to pass off as “family entertainment." But it's worth remembering it was Pixar that taught us to expect that quality in the first place.

Inspired by real events that unfolded in the conflicted borders of Mount Mghila in Tunisia in November 2015, Red Path marks the feature film debut of Tunisian author and director Lotfi Achour, after a long career in theatre and directing several shorts. His experience working with young actors draws a remarkably close, textured performance from Ali Hleli, who plays Achraf, a young shepherd in impoverished northern Tunisia who takes a herd of goats to graze in unfamiliar upland pastures with his teenage cousin Nizar (Yassine Samouni), unaware that it is a militarized zone.

After subathing on rocks and paddling in warm pools, the boys are attacked by Islamist militants, and Achraf is left to make his way home alone, with Nizar’s severed head in a duffel bag. “Show it to his mother and maybe then you'll all learn not to come here," the terrorists tell him, before vanishing.

Back at home, Achraf has to break the news to Nizar’s mother, and his sweetheart Rahma (Wided Dabebi). The family is powerless to act, the police are unmoved, and Nizar’s parents become fixed on retrieving their son’s body for a proper burial, forcing Achraf to make a return journey to a cursed land, clinging to visions he has of Nizar’s ghost, as he is haunted by guilt and grief.

Despite a string of awards at film festivals, including the Red Sea’s Golden Yusr, it has taken Red Path three years to get a UK theatrical release, but its focus on childhoods violated by war has never felt more timely, potent, or provocative.

Elio is on general release; Red Path is at Glasgow Film Theatre on 20 and 22 June

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