In societies of relative luxury, there is always a problem of people ignoring poverty. For some of us in our day to day lives, it’s easy to forget there are people living all around us, only getting by from paycheck to paycheck, if that. The Florida Project, from Tangerine director Sean Baker, is all about gleaming humanity out of such marginalized people and drawing attention to their lives from the youngest vantage point -punctuating the social disparity by setting their story just outside the “Happiest Place on Earth”.
Moonee (Brooklyn Prince) lives out of a hotel room in the obnoxiously kitschy town of Kissimmee, Florida a few miles down the highway from Walt Disney World, with her grossly negligent mother Halley (Bria Vinaite). She spends most of her days wandering around unsupervised with the other hotel kids, generally being a delinquent. The only person who seems to care for her well-being is the gruff manager Bobby (Willem Dafoe) who’s often impatient with Halley’s behaviour though sympathetic to her struggle to pay rent.
As with many slice-of-life movies like this, there’s not much of a traditional plot, and focus meanders from time to time to just show the routine and lifestyle of Moonee and Halley. But there is direction; certain trivial (and a couple very non-trivial) incidents do have consequences, such as resulting in one of the friends being suspended by their parent from playing with the others due to their bad influence. There are arcs for the characters woven through these moments too, whether of positive or negative development for both of the films’ leads. Their lives are very tough, and there are in fact, some rough moments to watch, particularly related to Halley’s decisions. Moonee, and the other kids to a lesser extent, are the focal point though, much of the movie being seen through their eyes, and it’s illustrated quite well through a number of scenes where significant moments for the adults are played in the background and can only barely be heard while the kids are watching T.V. or doing something else. There’s also a significant strain of optimism to their lives; despite their meagre situation, they are determined to find enjoyment in every activity.
Arguably the biggest risk of this movie was the fact that most of the cast are first-time actors. With the exception of Dafoe and Caleb Landry Jones who plays his son (kind of a pointless part for an actor like Jones), no one in the cast was an actor, and in fact like Beasts of the Southern Wild, many were plucked right from the area the film was shot in. And for a first-time performer, Bria Vinaite is pretty remarkable at portraying this aggravatingly irresponsible mother. She’s adept at playing both the reckless ignorant loose canon set on what seems to be a permanent downward spiral, and the desperate young woman who genuinely loves her daughter, but doesn’t have any interest in being a parent. As for that daughter, Brooklyn Prince is believable enough. I’m curious how much of her dialogue was scripted, because a lot of the time her rambling conversations with her friends feel extremely natural to how a kid her age would interact. I wonder whether in these scenes she and the other kids were ad-libbing based on cues or if it was all written by credited writers Baker and Chris Bergoch. If the latter, then I’m especially impressed with her performance. She can get grating at times to listen to, her behaviour often intentionally irritating, but the film never lets you believe its the result of anything other than her circumstances. Willem Dafoes’ performance is unsurprisingly the best. He’s brilliantly subtle all through the movie with a care-worn face and sympathetic nature that’s a good relief against the feelings of depression skirting the protagonists.
For its’ scenes of unvarnished poverty, The Florida Project actually manages to be a lush movie. It’s cinematography is very striking with a lot of over-saturated colours and rich lighting. It captures the mood of childhood late summers really well by following the kids around in continuous takes from their level, or just lingering on a particularly evocative moment, like when Moonee and Halley watch fireworks, or when Bobby just gazes towards the highway from the hotel with a breeze in his hair at dusk. Though Disney World’s screentime in this movie is very minimal, it never lets you forget the looming presence of the grand resort not far from where these characters are living in squalor. Disney is referenced by a lot of the tacky buildings the kids hang around, a brief scene features a Brazilian couple having mistaken the hotel (The Magic Castle) for the Magic Kingdom, and Halley gets some trouble after stealing someone’s wristband passes to sell off. The very fact the film is called The Florida Project (the original working name for Disney World) makes clear the intended commentary on the disenfranchised often existing in the shadow of great opulence.
This movie is not especially new. Similar themes relating to economic destitution in Florida and irresponsible parenting were a major part of last years’ Moonlight, while other areas of the film evoke older minimalist works like Terence Malick’s Days of Heaven (notably the exceptionally well-done ending). But The Florida Project is enticing, intelligent, and bold, worth seeing for both its unfiltered humanism and its sparks of hope.
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