RICH IN SPIRIT
Hollywood doesn’t make many movies about poverty, but The Florida Project joyfully bucks that trend
Some of the best movies in history have dealt with characters who were just barely scraping by — Bicycle Thieves and The Grapes of Wrath, Midnight Cowboy and Modern Times. But filmmakers today tend to avert their eyes from the horrors of financial hardship.
Sean Baker is one exception. He gravitates toward overlooked subjects, such as the black transgender prostitutes at the centre of his acclaimed low-budget marvel Tangerine in 2015. His latest feature, the rapturously received The Florida Project, is about homelessness, and could be a blueprint for filmmakers who want to explore social issues because of the savvy way it’s captivating audiences: It may be the most joyful movie about poverty ever screened.
That’s because it’s told from the perspective of Moonee, played by seven-year-old Brooklynn Prince. Moonnee and her mother, Halley (Bria Vinaite), live in a motel a stone’s throw from Disney World, and they’re part of Florida’s hidden homeless population — people who don’t have prospects for permanent housing so they resort to couch surfing with relatives or find other temporary alternatives.
According to Shelley Lauten, the chief executive of the Central Florida Commission on Homelessness, the movie is important not just be- cause it depicts characters without stable housing, but because it shows the non-stereotypical side of a nationwide epidemic.
“It’s what I call our tsunami of homelessness,” she said. “It’s the group that, across the country, we’re not doing a very good job of figuring out how to stabilize.”
According to a recent JPMorgan Chase study, in Florida alone, there are 72,000 homeless schoolage children, which doesn’t even account for those younger than five, Lauten said incredulously.
In the movie, Halley can’t find a job so, to make ends meet, she buys perfume from a wholesaler and sells it outside a swanky nearby resort. Moonnee and her friends, meanwhile, go searching for fun while stirring up trouble. Occasionally they drop by the motel’s main office where they terrorize Bobby, the tender-hearted but long-suffering manager (played by a transcendent Willem Dafoe).
“When there’s no moment of levity in a movie, I don’t believe it,” Baker said by way of explanation. Homelessness is a tragedy, but a movie about it doesn’t have to be.
Baker had wanted to make The Florida Project since 2011 when his co-writer, Chris Bergoch, told him about hidden homelessness. In the meantime, the pair made Tangerine, which became known as “that movie shot on an iPhone,” but it was so much more: a kinetic, farcical romantic comedy set on the seedier streets of Los Angeles.
The Florida Project isn’t all fun and games. There are moments that will surely break your heart. But it never resorts to melodrama.
For research, Baker and Bergoch travelled to Florida and met with motel residents and managers, plus non-profit and social agencies.
“One thing I got from everybody in the area is there was a real desire to have the stories told,” Baker said.
It’s what I call our tsunami of homelessness. It’s the group that, across the country, we’re not doing a very good job of figuring out how to stabilize. Shelley Lauten, Central Florida Commission on Homelessness