(2017, Dir. Sean Baker)
"I can always tell when adults are about to cry." I have been on the wait-list for this movie at my library for a few months now and it only just came in, so, needless to say, I didn’t get to see it before the Academy Awards. Oh well. Going into The Florida Project, I knew it was one of those movies that should’ve been nominated for Best Picture and wasn’t, but I didn’t really know what else to expect. I had actually seen the trailers for this one—despite the fact that I am vehemently opposed to watching trailers for movies I want to see, I couldn’t avoid this one. They kept showing it at my movie theater, but I did my best to tune it out. I was intrigued, though—I’m always a fan of Willem Dafoe (his cigarette-smoking rat in Fantastic Mr. Fox isn’t a career-defining performance for him, or anything, but it sure is funny) and I’m always a fan of things set in motels, hotels, what have you. After the trailers, still all I knew about the movie was: Willem Dafoe, purple motel, small child, Florida? So kudos to that trailer, I guess, for intriguing me but not giving me too much information. (Some trailers deserve a chance. Most don’t. So I avoid them all!) And speaking of too much information, there are (fairly light) spoilers from here on out! A big thing with The Florida Project is that it could have so easily had a major tone problem. I found myself worrying about it through a good chunk of the movie at the beginning. As a film it walks a really fine line between drama and comedy, and a lot of movies try to do that, and a lot of movies have a hard time finding that footing (*cough* Three Billboards *cough*). The Florida Project is really funny at times, and really devastating at others. Sometimes it’s both at once. The premise of this movie requires layers to work. It has layers, so it works. A good example of what I mean is the scene where Halley and Moonee take “swimsuit selfies!!!” It manages to include different perspectives on the scene—Moonee’s innocence, the audience’s knowledge that something deeper is going on—without violently hitting anyone over the head with subtext. For all its candy-colored vibes, The Florida Project is a subtle movie. A lot of movies about poverty like to go full-on tragic backstory. There’s no explicit backstory to be had here, and I didn’t miss it at all. Tragic backstory is a really easy way to play up the empathy factor, and they just didn’t need it in this movie. The characters are who they are, not fallen from some kind of former glory (or at least stability) to some kind of pitiable current existence. It’s a very present-tense story, which is difficult to negotiate, but well-executed overall. In that same vein, this movie had a habit of using these vignette-scenes that for some reason caused me a great deal of anxiety. Every time the kids went out on another unsupervised adventure and there was an extended shot of them walking, I thought for sure that one of them was about to get hit by a car or something. (It’s the same fear I experienced during all of Bicycle Thieves. Do I need to see a therapist?) And then every time, without fail, the scene would suddenly change and everything would be fine. At first, it felt kind of lazy, like they were always just building up this tension and then resolving it off-screen with a scene-change. (Remember in Season 2 of Gilmore Girls when there’s a whole episode about how Lorelai’s house is full of termites and it’s going to cost a million gazillion dollars to fix and then they never ever mention it again so we must assume it’s okay? Like that.) Ultimately, I think, it wasn’t lazy storytelling, though I’m still not entirely sure how I feel about it. To the filmmakers’ credit, these seemingly inconsequential vignettes established patterns and norms that became essential to creating a lived-in reality for the characters without top-heavy exposition. Then, it was all the more apparent when those patterns were disrupted. Some norms were established without me even realizing it until they were broken. Moonee goes through a lot throughout the course of the film, but it isn’t until the very end that she finally breaks down and cries. It’s a really powerful moment, and a really great performance. The fact that a seven-year-old carries this whole movie is really remarkable. That is to say, Brooklynn Prince is phenomenal. I hope she does more great stuff in the future, but I’m always worried about child actors. (Are they okay?!?!?) Willem Dafoe was fantastic and really amped up that essential Compassion Factor that The Florida Project kind of revolves around. Also, hey, Caleb Landry Jones, we saw a lot of you this awards season! Overall, great performances in this movie. It felt very Real. I will take this opportunity to clumsily transition to what is a possibly-clumsy analogy to Italian Neo-Realism. Not really the movement as a whole, but DeSica’s Bicycle Thieves specifically. I got serious Bicycle Thieves vibes from this movie, and I am prepared to explain! Big-picture-wise, it’s this idea of a parent and a child against the world. Both films show parents that don’t have it figured out (for whatever reason), but yet are trying to present a façade of certainty and experience to a young child. Also, The Florida Project’s cast of unknowns (save Jones and Dafoe) contributes to the kind of reality that Bicycle Thieves also aimed to create. More specifically, the scene where Halley takes Moonee to the hotel buffet reminded me a lot of the scene in Bicycle Thieves where they take a break from their search to eat those cheesy sandwiches. That being said, The Florida Project is a quintessentially American film. It speaks to a very specific kind of experience, and one that doesn’t get a lot of screentime—or, at least, accurate screentime. The Florida Project captures the aspects of American childhood that don’t revolve around school. The setting of the movie is extremely specific, yet the film speaks to a very broad range of people who had similar experiences despite disparate circumstances. There’s that Empathy Factor again--The Florida Project does a really nice job of showing that there’s a universality to childhood experiences and discoveries, regardless of who you are or where you come from. That’s power in cinema, folks!
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AuthorEileen here, writing reviews for film class. Archives
April 2018
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