Directed by: Sean Baker
Starring: Brooklynn Prince, Willem Dafoe, Bria Vinaite, Valerie Cotto, Christopher Rivera, Caleb Landry Jones
There isn't a plot to speak of in The Florida Project, just observations of daily life for people with bleak existences and even bleaker prospects. The action takes place over a summer in Orlando on a strip of highway home to shoddy motels just outside of Disney World. The purple eyesore known as The Magic Castle is run by Bobby (Dafoe), and in one amusing scene, a newlywed couple's honeymoon is accidentally booked there instead of in the magic kingdom. They are off by one word and a short traveling distance, but the worlds of Disney and The Magic Castle are so different the couple may as well have booked their hotel on the moon.
The characters who inhabit The Florida Project can barely afford the hotel rooms they call home. Three young children who are mostly unsupervised run amok around the facility and down the road to another motel. We first meet Moonee (Prince) and Scooty (Rivera) spitting on cars from the balcony, and they encounter a third girl named Jancey (Cotto), who will become the third member of their crew. They create mischief, run around making lots of noise, and bum change off of pitying customers at an ice cream stand so they can afford one ice cream cone to share between them. Moonee also accompanies her unemployed mother Halley (Vinaite) on scams at neighboring hotels where they sell fake perfume and jewelry to suckers. Mom barely ekes out enough to pay the rent, and is soon forced to turn tricks in her room with Moonee sitting in the bathtub right behind a closed door. Moonee isn't old enough to figure out what's going on, thank goodness, but nearly everyone else in the motel does.
Halley is an unapologetic hustler with a short temper and a misplaced sense of entitlement. She sends her daughter to get free food from the restaurant where her best friend works, but after a falling out, the gravy train is stopped, and an indignant Halley confronts her friend as if she is within her rights to somehow feel jilted. Halley has no sense of gratitude for her friend helping her out as long as she did. Moonee is doomed, and will sooner or later follow in her mother's footsteps, although she is years away from realizing that.
Bobby runs the motel in a futile attempt to keep some sort of order. He enforces the rules, but has a soft spot for his patrons, and will walk a mile for them but not much further. In a sense, we see Bobby as the authority figure these people need. He provides boundaries in a world where few of the patrons have any. One of the best scenes in the movie is how deftly he handles a potential child molester accosting the kids on the motel playground. In that one scene, we learn how much he cares for these kids who exasperate him most of the time with pranks and general unruliness. Bobby doesn't just scream and yell at the guy. He gains his confidence and politely leads him away from the area, so the kids aren't alarmed, but then lets him have it. Dafoe was nominated for a well-deserved Best Supporting Actor Oscar for this performance, which may be his best in a long, storied career playing various characters with a differing range of morals.
The movie doesn't make the mistake of portraying Halley for sympathy. She unapologetically made her bed and now must lie in it. She has no interest in a job, but instead wants to suck on society's teat for as long as she can. We are relieved when someone finally calls Child Protection Services on her, because Moonee may now finally have a chance. Vinaite is an actress I hadn't seen before, but she, like the others in the film, brings a natural realism to her performance. The Florida Project has a documentary feel to it. We are witnessing lives through a hidden camera and what we see is unnerving and sometimes sad and appalling, but it never feels less than authentic. I will say this is not a movie for everyone. It does not end happily and there is no message to it. Its mission is to observe the lives of its people, and we can only watch when we want so desperately to intervene. It is about a saddening world which is only a mile or so from The Happiest Place on Earth. The irony isn't lost on the viewer.
No comments:
Post a Comment