He’ll be just fine as he explores the world and finds himself in the process. In one of the film’s closing scenes, Luca’s grandmother rather bluntly lays out the moral of the story to Luca’s overprotective parents: The world at large may never fully accept Luca as he truly is, but he is more than capable of finding his own friends and making community for himself in spite of others’ hatred. A pair of old ladies in the crowd even reveal themselves to be sea monsters, implying that they had been present all along without most people even realizing it. Following his lead, the town celebrates and embraces the victory. However, in contrast to Ercole’s feelings of vindication for having sussed out something off about Luca and Alberto, Giulia’s father lowers his weapon and points out that the boys have won the race, a tacit reevaluation of his prejudices against sea monsters. In the end, as the boys finish the race at the cost of their anonymity, they find themselves face to face with the town-turned-mob. The town bully, Ercole, despises the outsiders as a threat to his role as the dominant masculine figure among the town’s children, even though he can’t pinpoint what about Luca and Alberto he finds so threatening. Giulia’s father is an avowed sea monster hunter, though he unwittingly comes to love the boys whom he does not suspect are the objects of his ire. They befriend fellow racer Giulia, and as she and Luca grow closer over their mutual love of learning, Alberto becomes jealous for reasons that he cannot fully articulate. They attempt to assimilate into broader human society in spite of the town’s fear and revulsion toward sea monsters, even though there's an ever-present risk that touching water will reveal their true forms. So Luca and Alberto run away to the nearby human-populated town, where they become embroiled in an annual racing competition with the goal of using the prize money to buy a Vespa of their own so that they may travel together. Upon discovering Luca’s exploration beyond the confines of their safe home, Luca’s mother threatens to send Luca away with his deep-sea dweller uncle, hoping that the experience will convert Luca to a less adventurous disposition. After meeting another adolescent sea monster named Alberto, Luca breaks his family’s taboo and ventures onto the land, adopting human appearance and developing a close bond with Alberto as they endeavor to build the perfect Vespa together. The film opens on Luca, an adolescent sea monster who wonders if there’s more to life than the cloistered role as a shepherd that his family foists upon him. If you didn’t catch this subtext upon first watching Luca, allow me to recap the plot, but keep in the back of your mind that Luca and Alberto’s status as sea monsters and adventurous personalities functions as a loose analog for queer identity. Too bad Luca also aggressively pushes its queer themes into subtextual depths, preventing them from breaking surface even as they drive the entirety of the film’s emotional current. What makes it stand out among Disney’s animated catalog, though, is that it is a pretty obvious attempt at tackling queer themes in a family-oriented film, which should be a laudable step forward for one of the largest entertainment companies in the world in recognizing and validating a sizeable percentage of their overall underrepresented audience. It’s a cute, relatively low-stakes affair that isn’t as showy or even necessarily as inventive as Pixar’s best attempts, but it’s an enjoyable coming-of-age film nonetheless. Luca is, for all intents and purposes, a good film.
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