The Flori­da Project – first look review

In the hair-rais­ing open­ing scene of Sean Baker’s extra­or­di­nary neo-real­ist fable, The Flori­da Project, three over­stim­u­lat­ed tod­dlers Moonee (Brook­lynn Prince) Scooty (Christo­pher Rivera) and Dicky (Aiden Malik) dash with arms flail­ing from The Mag­ic King­dom to Future Land. Though they are nes­tled deep in Dis­ney coun­try, their sit­u­a­tion is far from enchant­i­ng, as these venues are in fact oppor­tunist motel blocks named to lure hol­i­day­ing saps into their grimy net. Hard cut to Kool and the Gang’s ​‘Cel­e­bra­tion’ for the open­ing cred­its, and we’re all set to go.

Even though the world of this film con­sists of out­stretched carparks, giant dump­sters, nov­el­ty fast food con­ces­sions and scads of over­grown scrub­land, Bak­er con­stant­ly assures that there is always a dash of fairy dust in the air if you know where to look for it. He car­ries over the rau­cous spir­it of his per­vi­ous iPhone opus, Tan­ger­ine, and then bold­ly notch­es things up a lev­el for this new one. It feels like his most epic and pro­found­ly affect­ing film to date. And it’s not that it looks expen­sive or that the sto­ry is broad­er in scope than usu­al. More that it offers a tren­chant and com­pas­sion­ate polit­i­cal state­ment about the con­di­tion of work­ing class Amer­i­ca with­out once resort­ing to bald point mak­ing or cliché.

Bria Vinaite is a major new dis­cov­ery as tat­ted-up sin­gle mom Hal­ley, a woman-on-the-verge who sup­press­es all fear and takes care of busi­ness when she has to in order to raise her wise­crack­ing lil’ ter­ror, Moonee. She charges towards life and doesn’t care about what oth­ers think of her, even though she doesn’t real­ly abide by any tra­di­tion­al stan­dards of moth­er­hood. The film is about how this duo are able to keep their head bob­bing above the pover­ty line, but it’s also about how Hal­ley allows her daugh­ter to exist in a world of make-believe, know­ing that the crush­ing real­i­ty of their cir­cum­stances might sap away her infec­tious joie de vivre. That sense of unal­loyed free­dom might be the one thing keep­ing the tiny fire­crack­er aflame.

Then, play­ing the wise old sage who tries to keep crazy Hal­ley under his wing (and out of jail), is a mag­nif­i­cent Willem Dafoe as door­mat motel man­ag­er Bob­by, a har­ried man who is just about able to keep his row­dy ten­ants in check. And that is pret­ty much that. The film fol­lows the kids on their dai­ly adven­tures to sur­round­ing lots and allows us to gig­gle at their mon­keyshines. It’s a cel­e­bra­tion of inno­cence and ener­gy, but it also nev­er once makes out the Mag­ic King­dom to be an off-ramp hell­hole full of life’s unfor­tu­nate dregs. This film puls­es with empa­thy – Bak­er loves these places, and for more than rea­sons of high kitsch.

Laugh­ter and sad­ness co-min­gle until a euphor­ic finale scene sends the sto­ry into the realms of pure can­dy-coat­ed fan­ta­sy. It’s a breath­tak­ing vision of fight­ing spir­it and how the mod­ern Amer­i­can under­class take any action avail­able (legal or oth­er­wise) for the pur­pos­es of self-bet­ter­ment. Cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Alex Zabe bathes the land­scape in misty peach hues and laces it with nev­er-end­ing rain­bows. And what more is there to say? You must see this beau­ti­ful, vibrant, heart­felt and hilar­i­ous movie as soon as you damn well can, bi-yatch.