LUCA
PURE SHORES
DIRECTOR ENRICO CASAROSA DISCUSSES DISNEY AND PIXAR’S “COMING OF AGE” MONSTER MOVIE, LUCA
WORDS: DARREN SCOTT
© DISNEY
A LOVE LETTER TO the summers of youth, set in a seaside town on the Italian Riviera, Luca takes the viewer to a beautiful holiday location infused with childhood nostalgia. There’s pasta, gelato, scooter rides and lots of jumping off cliffs into the murky green ocean below. Oh, and Luca and Alberto happen to be teenage sea monsters, so you know it’s going to get complicated…
Did you always want a fantastical element to this story?
When I develop things I always think about two elements: the fantastical and a lot of imagination, and then the heart of the story and more of a personal relationship or something that I experienced in my life. La Luna (2011), the short, it was very similar –I thought about my family. What felt different in this one is actually that there’s a third element, there’s personal, there’s the fantastical and now there’s actually a setting that’s real, but we want to make it our own and take you to Italy.
What inspired the sea monsters? I know there’s an origin in folklore.
I’ve always been fascinated with stories of changelings. There’s some folklore from Japan that I’ve always been fascinated with; there are foxes that can look like humans or tanuki, little raccoon dogs that, again, have the ability to transform – or the selkies from Ireland. I’ve always loved those stories, because the kid in me looked at the world and wondered, “Is there more than meets the eye?”