Wednesday 8 November 2017

Review: The Florida Project



The Florida Project (2017) - Sean Baker

       The Florida Project is a very quietly ambitious movie. It's dramatic but funny. Very little happens in way of plot, but it manages to represent several very different characters in a way that's honest and captivating. It's mostly about children and childhood, but it doesn't treat its audience like a kid. It's a smart and well-acted movie that is so simple in premise and so delicately well-done that it almost seems ridiculous it hadn't been made already. I mean, yeah, similar films have probably been made, but not as good as this. It was moving and not and tragic but not overwrought and it made me feel emotions in my chest-brain area.
       There are a lot of characters floating around The Magic Kingdom, the low-rate, nearby Disney World-but-certainly-not-in-any-way-affiliated-with-Disney-World hotel that functions as close to a permanent residence as the law allows for many of its tenants, but the story truly belongs to Moonee (Brooklynn Prince). She's a mischievous but sweet six-year-old girl on summer break, precocious but not in a twee, Wes-Anderson-dancing-on-the-beach-to-French-vinyl-precocious. She's actually believable. She's still a child who says silly things, plays with her friends, and lies when she's afraid of getting in trouble. She just happens to be more perceptive than most her age, and a lot of that is because of her tattooed, blunt-smoking and hustling mother, Hallee (Bria Vinaite), who takes her daughter along with her as she hocks cheap perfume outside fancier hotels than the one she lives in and teaches her daughter how to twerk.
       Most of the movie focuses around Moonee and her two best friends, Scooty and Jancey (do kids in Florida really have names like this? I genuinely can't tell if I hope so or not) while they do the things kids do: they play. They run around. They spit on people's cars (again, I mention: Florida). They go swimming. Long stretches involve these three just being kids. Luckily for us, it's very charming and never veers off into too precious or aimless. I truly can't tell how much of the scenes with the children had actual scripts, and how much of it they were able to just get these pretty great children actors to riff while spending time with each other. It's a testament to the direction and script by Sean Barker (co-written by Chris Bergoch) that I can't quite tell. Either way, the children are all appropriately adorable and their scenes together range form sweet to downright funny.
       But the film's subtext is always there. These people in the hotel, former teenage mothers and grandma's forced to care for their grandkids, are clearly not in ideal predicaments. What the movie does so smartly, however, is keeps all these more dramatic elements at bay, squarely seen from Moonee's perspective. The narrative threads and adult problems are still presented to the audience, but only incrementally, bit by bit, almost like we were children who don't quite yet understand the world we've been thrust into.
      The hotel where they live, just outside Disney World, is also such an integral part of the story. Moonee and her mom live close enough to see affluent families in richer hotels take private helicopter rides to and from the park (and gleefully flip them off in the process). Moonee is able to panhandle for ice cream bucks from tourists with kids of their own. The looming shadow of Disney World is a constant reminder of their every day difficulties. They're so close to the Happiest Place on Earth (my idea of happiness is very different than that of the Disney Marketing team, but whatever), and yet they're stuck just on the outside. Moonee is just too unequipped to fully understand it. She only sees some free ice cream. To really drive the point home, The Florida Project was the original name used to describe Disney World when they were first conceiving it (get it? Get iiiiit?)
       Willem Dafoe takes a break form being the scariest actor in the entire universe to play Bobby, the hotel manager who (shockingly, I know) is gruff but has a heart of gold. Even this role, as silly as it sounded as I typed it, is done with craft and a lot of care. He's an actual person and in just a few scenes they really us a pretty clear picture of who he is. Most films/actors require much more effort and time than that, but The Florida Project makes it look easy.
       For a movie that deals with so many depressing and heartbreaking themes, it's fairly incredible how enjoyable and realistic it feels while it's playing, With its lack of narrative momentum and almost two hour run-time, I never once felt my attention waver. And I think that's because the movie feels just real enough, and most importantly, Sean Barker and the filmmakers refuse to judge anybody. Not the people who've isolated themselves or made bad decisions, not the people who've had to steal to pay the bills, and not even the more affluent people who can actually afford to go to Disney World and not just watch the fireworks from the field behind the parking lot. The Florida Project simply lets them exist in a particularly well-made world. Even if elements are unfamiliar, Moonee's story of childhood is just as relatable and honest as she is.

Grade: 17 Strawberries and Raspberries Eaten Together

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