The Florida Project

I didn't like Moonee at first.  She acted like a bona-fide brat, manipulative and disrespectful of peer and adult alike. Her cohorts in mischief, Scooty and Dicky, were little better.  But as it goes, they only imitate what they see in their parents.  Mothers, at least.  2017's THE FLORIDA PROJECT focuses on Moonee and her mother Halley, who live in a dive hotel on Highway 192 in Kissimmee, not far from the Walt Disney World theme parks.  Not far in miles, but for those dirt poor souls pushed to the margins of society, it may as well be across the globe.

Their life is rough.  The hotel is tacky and filthy.  They scrounge for cash by selling trinkets and perfume to ambushed tourists in parking lots. The garishness of gift shops and attractions both delight and remind them they are firmly on the outside of the consumer paradise. This is not the Orlando many people see, at least not on purpose.  When things get increasingly desperate, Halley may not be above stealing theme park passes, or selling herself.  Halley is a profane, somewhat pathetic young woman who just never had a shot at anything.  We don't learn her backstory, but it wouldn't be too hard to figure.  She loves her daughter.

There is a bright spot in their lives: Bobby, the hotel's manager.  He watches with a paternal eye and protects the girls from repercussions that perhaps should be felt, lest lessons be learned.  That sounds harsh, easy to hand down from the confines of a comfortable room while clacking a keyboard.  I have to go back to the immersive, beguiling experience of viewing writer/director Sean Baker's film and recall how I too felt protective of Halley and Moonee at every step, even when the shit inevitably comes down hard at the end. Nothing like some raw, cinema verite-like voyeurism to confront your own prejudices and judgments.  What would many of us do in Bobby's corner? Halley's?

Bobby, beautifully and quite naturally portrayed by Willem Dafoe, extends a father's concern that manifests as frustration, playfulness, and hard discipline in equal measure.  But there will be moments when his authority will be usurped, perhaps due to his own inability to face the crushing realities of poverty, those of his tenants and maybe even his own.

THE FLORIDA PROJECT captures the sweaty banality of central Florida better than most anything I've seen.  Only Larry Clark has been as successful behind the camera.  It's a shattering, sobering film that won't leave my thoughts anytime soon.  Baker employs Alexis Zabe's cinematography to create a fashioned yet very realistic seeming drama, one which is so engaging you feel no escape, one that makes you feel as if you're as desperate as the characters.  Aside from Dafoe, the actors are first timers, selected because they were right, not because they were a Flavor of the Year or a casting director saw them shopping on Melrose Avenue.

The final few minutes of this movie have not pleased everyone, but I found them to be perfect, just the way children might respond to an enveloping trauma which promises no rosy future.  God bless those like them.  Think about them the next time you enter the Magic Kingdom.