The Florida Project
Can you l ove t he movie and hate the c haracters? The Fl ori da Projec t , writer/director Sean Baker’s followup to his 2015 critical hit Tangerine, is an audacious and controlled piece of filmmaking, but its cast members operate at such a consistently shrill pitch that the whole enterprise becomes tiring, even annoying. You might enjoy a movie about a guy who operates a jackhammer, but not if he spent the entirety of the film on the job.
The best/ worst t hing about The Florida Project is six- year- old Moonee, played by Brooklynn Prince. She lives in a down- market Orlando hotel called Magic Castle, painted a disturbing mauve I can only call Magic Purple. The ringleader of a trio of pint- sized hellions, Moonee swears, steals, twerks, lights fires, imprecates the tourists, spits on cars and Never. Shuts. Up. She’s like a birthday party attendee, if the entertainment was Satan, the venue a prison riot, and the party favour a line of cocaine.
Close second in the amazing/annoying category is Bria Vinaite as Halley, Moonee’s wild-child mom. Halley tries to make ends meet through a combination of black-market sales, begging and prostitution. It’s instructive that when a man complains of being robbed by someone from the hotel, the manager’s first response is: “The six- yearold?” The victim looks taken aback: “No, man, the mom.”
Bobby the manager is played by Willem Dafoe, and he is the nearest thing the film has to a calm centre, as he tries ( mostly in vain) to keep the Magic Castle operating smoothly. The scene where he gently shoos away a trio of cranes from the driveway is pure cinematic poetry; this while Halley is crashing a nearby, fancier hotel to plunder its breakfast buffet, while Moonee snorfs down berries and muses: “I wish they made forks out of candy.”
I get it; we’re meant to feel for these impoverished fringe-dwellers, living in the shadow of Walt Disney’s massive theme park (which he called “the Florida project” in planning) but unable to afford any of its magic. The closest they get is the occasional view of the nightly fire- works, and the near-constant drone of helicopters ferrying wealthy tourists, at whom Halley and Moonee often flip a middle finger.
But sympathy can melt like ice cream in the Floridian sun when there’s so little context to be had. Whatever mistakes or misfortunes have landed Halley in this landscape remain frustratingly unexplored; there’s no sign of Moonee’s dad, and her mom’s remark that “I can’t get arrested again” is the nearest the film comes to positing a back story.
We’re left with oodles of atmosphere, as the southern sun shimmers on the screen, punctuated by occasional intense, tropical storm bursts. And Baker has a wonderful way of framing the many tacky tourist temptations that dot the terrain, advertising oranges, Disney souvenirs and the chance to fire a real machine gun. But for all that kitschy beauty, I wouldn’t want to spend one more minute with Moonee, here or anywhere else. ∂∂½