I’ve seen a lot of people discussing whether or not Luca and Alberto have a simple friendship with each other, and yes, the main theme of this film is to celebrate pure friendship.Director and screenwriter Enrico Casarosa is from Italy, and you may have seen his Oscar-nominated short film “Moon God:The director’s father and grandfather did not have a good relationship, so “Moon God” came about. He was born and raised in the port city of Genoa, and spent his summers vacationing in the five fishing villages of Cinque Terre, where jumping from the high rocks into the sea was a daily occurrence. The town in the film is taken from the five fishing villages, especially the representative fishing village Vernazza (Vernazza), picturesque, their beauty like being frozen in time.
Mainly strong 1950s ~ 1960s summer Italian style seaside town town nostalgia, “Luca” is a love letter sent by the director to his hometown and childhood. The film production cycle of five years, in 2016 the creators set up the first team to Genoa to collect material, visited the five fishing villages and surrounding towns, from the terrain and vegetation landscape to the food characteristics to the color of the sea water sound of the waves were recorded in real, and strive to do a word ‘”specific “. The virtual town of Portorosso in the film is a masterpiece, it is said that a street, a scene and a thing can almost all find a prototype in the local, such as the stills in that stone cave: from the stills can be seen in this film bright colors, hand-drawn style, traditional 2D animation style, certain scenes may have the taste of Miyazaki Hayao. The director grew up watching Hayao Miyazaki’s “Future Boy Conan” (1978) and is a Miyazaki fan deeply influenced by it, they also met. Miyazaki Hayao for “three thousand miles to find his mother” (1976) also came to the director’s hometown Genoa scenes (the main character Marco live in the port of Genoa), can be said to be very close. Animation supervisor Michael Venturini said in an interview that in order to find design inspiration they watched all the animation the director watched as a child, and also referred to Aardman Animation and Leica, which are good at making stop-motion animation. The team is committed to simplifying lines, as much as possible with the picture and character expressions, movements to convey the message.
The film is partly inspired by Hayao Miyazaki’s 1992 work “Red Pig/Red Dolphin/Porco Rosso” (set in Italy in the 1920s), and as a tribute, the original plan was to use Portorosso as Luca’s last name, but it ended up being the name of the town, corresponding to Monterosso in the five fishing villages. (Luca’s last name is Paguro. Alberto’s last name is Scorfano, which means scorpionfish in Italian)
Luca’s role is set to 13 years old (in 2021 it just so happens that the director’s daughter is also 13 years old), with big eyes and full of curiosity about the world. His main job every day is to shepherd goatfish until he meets 14-year-old Alberto, who is independent and free-spirited, the complete opposite of Luca’s personality, and the prototype is the director’s childhood friend Alberto.
The director met Alberto at the age of 11 or 12, he was born in 1971, they met in the 80s, but it should be noted that the film is set in the 5, 60s, because the director loves the Italian golden age of film and music, he drew a lot from hand-drawn, stop-motion animation and the works of Italian filmmakers such as Federico Fellini (Fellini) He drew a lot of inspiration from hand-drawn, stop-motion animation and the work of Italian filmmakers like Federico Fellini. Fellini’s 1953 autobiographical “The Prodigal Son” is about the sour and sweet of growing up in a small Italian town with five young people, the protagonist Moraldo longed to escape his hometown to the big city, and finally left everything behind and took the train alone without saying goodbye, “Luca” ends with a tribute to this film and uses the same train design. Luca’s dazzling and treacherous dreams and fantasies are inspired by the 1963 film “8½”, one of the director’s favorite films. To stay close to the era, the film recreates the architectural style, food, fonts, piazza posters (Roman Holiday, La strada, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea), transportation and other elements of the time. The design of the Vespa in the film is based on the 1959 model, when the director really had a scooter and the two would ride around the coast. In order to use the Vespa in the film also contacted the Vespa company to obtain authorization. In one scene, Alberto put a real-life mug shot on his homemade scooter and made his face like Marcello Mastroianni in 1961’s Italian Divorce, whose daughter Chiara Mastroianni voiced Luca’s mother Daniela in the French version of Luca.
Alberto is a little troublemaker, he will get into all kinds of trouble with him, but he will push himself, out of his comfort zone to explore the unknown, just like leaving the water and going over the cliff in the film. That is at the heart of Luca, the core of the film, or the biggest theme, is friendship, the friendship between an introverted child and an extroverted child, as they grow up to know themselves and achieve each other.
The Sea monsters in the film are derived from old Italian local legends and folk songs. The five fishing villages are rich in legends, and most of them are made up by the fishermen to scare others away from their top secret fishing spots. As a child, the director loved the old maps with sea monsters drawn on them, and wondered if there were really sea monsters in human form hiding among ordinary people.