Flow

As I've aged I've become far more sensitive with film content.  Especially when animals are involved.  And animated features with animals? I'm already welling up.  At least with the more somber ones.  You may have read my reviews of WATERSHIP DOWN and THE RED TURTLE.  For me, animals are pure love.  Unconditional.  Yes I realize, especially for those feral, that very often they are just trying to survive.  Doing whatever they need to that end.  Instinctual.  What was that line in LIFE OF PI?  "What you see in (an animal's) eyes is your own emotion reflected back at you."

2024's FLOW, winner of the Oscar for Best Animated Feature considers both sides.  It concerns a disparate group of animals who find their world underwater.  The time period is not specified, but it's clear that all the humans are gone.  Director/co-writer Gints Zilbalodis only provides the sketch of a cat on a desk to indicate they were once there.  Also, curious statues, some quite enormous, of cats.  A cat is in fact our protagonist.  He wanders the forest and when he gets tired, leaps through a broken attic window onto the bed of one of those departed humans.  When a great flood of unknown origin engulfs the house, the cat will find himself on a sailboat with a Labrador Retriever, a lemur, and a capybara, navigating to parts unknown.  Survival.

It's a perilous journey.  The cat will fall off the boat more than once.  He and his new compadres will also encounter a secretarybird and his compadres in a tense scene.  Along the way, the strangers will bond and become protective of each other.  There is also a pack of dogs who are seen now and again. They clearly represent the kind of fair weather friends we've all met and lost.

FLOW is a simple but rich adventure.  Its notions will be understandable to children and a springboard for older, wiser viewers.  Those are the best sort of fables, animated or otherwise.  Zilbalodis achieves powerful emotion without sentimentality.  The animals do not talk.  We hear the sounds they make in real life.  Thus, no cute jokes or clumsy philosophical speeches.  How rare for a contemporary feature such as this to be free of silliness.  And ADHD plotting and editing.  There are stressful scenarios within this movie, but no sustained action set pieces.

Rather, meditative.  While the animation of our creatures runs a certain gamut (something about the lighting/shading?) we can still read their faces.  See their concerns, fears, joys.   I read one review that criticized a moment when our friends all roll around together, celebrating a victory.  Yes, this would be unlikely in real life, but I took it as a slightly exaggerated gesture of love.  Like when cats or bears or what have you rub up against each other. 

I'm a cat person so I was instantly attracted to FLOW.  Zilbalodis and co-screenwriter Rihards Zalupe give our hero plenty of personality without resorting to anthropomorphism.  The cat represents the individual who does learn to work with others. Who realizes sometimes it does "take a village".  Who is not merely the aloof caricature many non-cat people believe of the species.