Movie Review: The Florida Project

The Florida Project **** ½ / *****

Directed by: Sean Baker.

Written by: Sean Baker & Chris Bergoch.

Starring: Willem Dafoe (Bobby), Brooklynn Prince (Moonee), Valeria Cotto (Jancey), Bria Vinaite (Halley), Christopher Rivera (Scooty), Caleb Landry Jones (Jack), Macon Blair (Tourist John), Karren Karagulian (Narek), Sandy Kane (Gloria).

 

There is a lot to love about Sean Baker’s The Florida Project – a beautiful, honest slice-of-life drama set beside the happiest place on earth in Florida – but perhaps none more than the best child performance I have seen in years by young Brooklynn Prince. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a more natural performance by a child this young – she has to be 6 or 7 at the oldest – she never hits a false note. It’s a performance full of life – full of youthful exuberance that perfectly captures that age. The movie itself gives that performance a hint of sadness – not because of anything overt that Prince does, but just because at some point, we realize what the future most likely holds for Prince’s character Moonee. Now, she is innocent, and getting into the type of trouble that all kids that age get into – where their parents still get mad at them, but do so while smiling on the inside, because it’s not that bad. She spits on a car with her friends for instance – or puts a dead fish in the pool to “try and bring it back to life”. How do you not smile at that?

 

I realize that the first paragraph of this review perhaps makes The Florida Project sound like a feel good, Hollywood tearjerker, coming of age story – something like Stand By Me for instance, but that’s not really what this movie is. The movie is largely plotless, and takes place entirely in and around The Magic Castle, a rundown motel close to Disney Land in Florida, but is not a place you would stay if you had the money to go to Disney Land (unless, as in one very funny scene, you made a mistake with the online reservation). It’s summer vacation, and Moonee lives in one of the rooms with her mother, Halley (Bria Vinaite) – who is in her early 20s, has no job, and whoever Moonee’s father was, is no longer around. Halley gets buy, week-to-week, on the rent by conducting various scams – like buying wholesale perfume, and selling it to tourists at the richer hotels in the area. Moonee basically spends her days getting into mischief with her pals Scooty (Christopher Rivera) and Jancey (Valeria Cotto) – never quite understanding how close to being homeless she is, or how desperate her mother gets. The other major character in the film is Bobby (Willem Dafoe) – the motel manager, who isn’t what you expect him to be. Halley and Moonee are not the first family unit he’s seen in this situation – and they won’t be the last – and yet, he hasn’t grown cold or cynical. He really does care about them in his gruff one. The movie observes these various characters – and those who come in contact with them – over the course of a few weeks during the summer.

 

The Florida Project is a smart movie by co-writer/director Sean Baker, who follows-up his acclaimed breakthrough film Tangerine, about two transgender prostitutes in L.A., which he shot on an iPhone, with this film, shot on 35MM film. This film is bolder visually – and certainly brighter – than Tangerine, and yet it has the same humanistic approach to the storytelling. This one is even less driven by plot than Tangerine was – that one had a few storylines running throughout. This one is an even more closely observed film that really does understand these various characters, and their existence. It delves into the kind of lives that we don’t often see in movies – and rush by in real life. It also nails the feeling of what it’s like to be in Florida (in my limited experience anyway) – you feel the heat coming off everything, you can also feel the sadness underneath a lot of the happier facades in the film. At the heart, there are the great performances – by Prince, Dafoe and Vinaite – two movies, and a pro-, doing some of the very best work of his long career. The movie ends, probably as it must – with a moment that is both sad, yet perhaps somehow optimistic. This is one of the great films of the year – it’s not to be missed.

Movie Review: Tangerine

Tangerine
Directed by: Sean Baker.
Written by: Sean Baker & Chris Bergoch.
Starring: Kitana Kiki Rodriguez (Sin-Dee), Mya Taylor (Alexandra), Karren Karagulian (Razmik), Mickey O'Hagan (Dinah), James Ransone (Chester), Alla Tumanian (Ashken), Luiza Nersisyan (Yeva), Arsen Grigoryan (Karo), Ian Edwards (Nash), Clu Gulager (The Cherokee), Ana Foxx (Selena), Scott Krinsky (Parsimonious John), Chelcie Lynn (Madam Jillian).

Sean Baker’s Tangerine both feels like many other movies, as well as something new and exciting. There’s a little bit of Kenneth Anger or John Waters in its depiction on life on the fringes of society that most people aren’t paying any attention to, a little bit of early Tarantino in all the L.A. locations, that feel like some place the characters of Reservoir Dogs or Pulp Fiction would frequent, a little bit of 1990s DIY Sundance films, and a few other types of films as well. Still, even if the movie does little to hide its inspirations, it does feel like something raw, energetic and totally unique. The film was shot entirely on an iPhone (with some of adapter to get the right aspect ratio), and the colors are as saturated as an old MGM musical (or a Michael Mann film now that I think about it). The storytelling can be sloppy at times – and even at just 95 minutes, the film feels padded and overlong – and the mostly non-professional acting is uneven in spots. But the film works – it pulls the audience along into its own strange little world.

The film opens with Sin-Dee Rella (Kitana Kiki Rodriguez) and Alexandra (Mya Taylor) in a Donut Shop – and not a chain donut shop either, but something called Donut Time. Both are transgender prostitutes, and Sin-Dee has just been released from a 28-day stretch in jail on Christmas Eve, when Alexandra gives her the bad news. Her pimp/fiancée Chester has been cheating on her the whole time she was in jail – and worse still, with one of natural born female prostitutes. This sets Sin-Dee off on a cross L.A. journey to try and find this woman. Alexandra meanwhile is giving out posters for her singing gig that night to all of their friends – telling them be there at 7 sharp. Then there’s Rasmik (Karren Karagulian) – an Armenian cab driver, with a wife and baby (not to mention a very loud mother-in-law) at home, who frequents the transgender prostitutes in L.A. – and has very particular tastes.

The film mainly plays as a comedy – even when the film gets a little violent - and when Sin-Dee finally finds the woman she’s looking for, Dinah (Mickey O’Hagan), its gets violent as she drags the poor woman across all over town, with just one shoe – the film mainly plays it for laughs (whether those scenes are funny or not is open for debate). The ending also has a little bit of a tone problem – as Baker tries to bring all the threads of the plot together in one big scene – a madhouse really, where we finally meet Chester, and everyone else shows up at one spot. This long scene is at once one of the best in the movie – it is remarkable how it sustains its energy throughout what is a long, complicated scene, and one of the more problematic – as things go from comic to serious in the blink of an eye, but the movie never pauses to consider the serious consequences of this scene. As well, the scene adds new information to an already overly complicated sequence.

Still, problems with the storytelling aside, Tangerine mainly works because the characters feel real, and unlike ones you have seen before. They aren’t saints to be sure, but they also aren’t really bad either – meaning they’re just like real people that way. They may do things that are awful – and hurt others without pausing to consider what it means – but they are mainly well-meaning. They feel like those rare movie characters who exist outside of the movie – as if the audience just dropped in on them for a day – their problems had started before the movie, and will continue afterwards.

It’s somewhat surprising to be that co-writer/director Sean Baker is not a first time filmmaker, because Tangerine certainly feels like a debut feature. It has the energy and ambition that first timers often have, coupled with the raggedness of the execution. You can tell there’s a lot of talent here, it just needs to be a little more focuses. Overall, Tangerine works because of the humanity on display – a glimpse into a world that movies rarely attempt to portray – but this one does, and does it well. Baker wasn’t on my radar before – but he is now, and I want to see what he does next.