Elementary: Clash of Cultures Explained to Kids in New Pixar

Recommended from 6 years

Once: In Element City, fire, water, earth and air live in perfect harmony. Here lives Flem, a bold and quick-witted young woman with a strong character, and Flack, a sentimental and funny boy, more of a follower. Their friendship challenges Flemmi’s beliefs about the world they live in…

In French…

In the French version, the young Flamboyante Flam Lumen is voiced by the famous actress Adele Exarchopoulos. This is the first time the actress, announced by La Vie d’Adèle in 2013, has voiced a character in an animated film. Her tone is a perfect match for Flemmi’s volcanic temperament, doubled by a young Leah Lewis in the original version.

Riad Sattouf’s Beau Gosse, Vincent Lacoste, lends his voice to Flack Delamarre, a compassionate waterspout full of (literally) tears (voiced in VO by Mamoudou Athie). In 2022 César for Best Supporting Actor for the film Illusions Perdues, Vincent Lacoste already tried his hand at dubbing in 2017 with the character of Pierre Coré in Gary Sahara.

The two actors will soon find themselves in the cast of L’Amour Ouf, Gilles Lelouch’s next film.

Modern Romeo and Juliet

What they love: With its bright colors and colorful and engaging characters, Elementary will captivate viewers. A year after Buzz Lightyear, the Pixar studio is back on the scene with a modern Romeo and Juliet, except here Juliet is a little flame with a fiery temper and her Romeo is a very emotional puddle. Opposites attract, but can they complement each other? This is an elementary question to answer.

After his brilliant personification of emotion in Inside Out, Pete Docter, now Pixar’s art director, allows Peter Son (director of The Voyage of Arlo) to revisit his childhood as a Korean immigrant in New York by bringing the elements to life.

Elementary is a moving film that, thanks to the use of elements, makes it possible to approach topics such as culture shock, immigration and sometimes conflicted family relationships.

A multicultural city

To create Element City, where all these elements of different origins coexist harmoniously, the artistic team revealed the competition. If the city welcomes all elements, it is still more difficult to reach flamboyants who prefer to stay among them outside the megapolis.

The director explains in the press kit: “Ct is a hopeful city for creating interesting elemental relationships. Water can help the earth produce materials that can be used to fuel fire. Air also provides oxygen to the fire. Of course, sometimes there is friction between elements.

There is a hierarchy in the element city. The first community to arrive is the water community, which is the main infrastructure of the city. The earth group followed, so the city is built on a delta where earth and water meet. From there came air, then fire. This represents a real narrative advantage. Due to its water-based infrastructure, Element City presents an obstacle for Flam. It is more difficult for Flamboyant to navigate in it, but at the same time, it gives him the opportunity to explore the unknown world and the opportunity to get to know himself.

Things can bother them : Impulsive Flem gets carried away quickly and his anger is explosive, though neither scene is truly disturbing. What can affect the youngest is quite relevant to the topic.

A choice between family expectations and personal ambitions

The heroine is afraid of disappointing her father and is ready to put aside her ambitions and feelings to please him. The fear of disappointing and angering his parents, and the guilt Flam feels knowing they left Fireland to give him a better life, should move young viewers.

Peter Sohn Also addresses the issue in the press kit and explains: “My film helps us understand our parents as individuals. From this understanding comes the recognition of the sacrifices they made for their children. My father and mother emigrated from Korea in the early 1970s. So I was born and raised in Korean traditions. Language and culture are precisely American in New York City. This caused a cultural clash between the first and second generations. I took for granted the hardships and hardships they had to endure.“

A topic that will open up a discussion with your little ones about family expectations and their personal ambitions, and maybe make them realize that parents’ choices shouldn’t be a burden on their children.

What will they keep inside: The film has a subtext that will appeal to parents and therefore makes it possible to discuss different topics with children, namely difference, fear of others, racism, culture shock, but also transmission, the freedom to be who we want and the child/parent relationship. Differences can be our strength and opposites, beyond attracting each other, as they say, can complement each other and make each other even stronger.

To write the film, director Peter Son took a lot of inspiration from his personal story. At the closing of the Cannes Film Festival, he met at the presentation of the film, the latter explained to us: “Vol.out starts from a very personal starting point. After my previous film, I went to New York to attend a ceremony to thank my parents. I went on stage, I saw the room and I burst into tears… I thanked everyone for the sacrifices they made for me and my brother. And I remember someone in the room yelling, “Yes, you can thank them!‘.

When I went back to Pixar, I told them the story, and they said, “This is your next movie. And that’s when I started thinking about this idea of ​​the elements, fire meeting water. This is also from my personal experience, as I married an Italian-American, which caused a lot of tension in my family.“

Peter Sohn has therefore incorporated his own experiences into his film, offering a work that is both personal and universal that will appeal to a wide audience.