"There is no worse monster than the annihilation of childhood." I wish this phrase had occurred to me, but it belongs to one of my university professors. A woman who had a very hard childhood, as she had to go through the bitterness and deprivation that only poverty and neglect can cause... And why am I mentioning this in a review of a film? Precisely because, like my professor, The Florida Project has a very similar storyline.
Here we follow the life of a little six year old girl who lives with her mother, a woman who works at a nightclub but is unemployed, and who drags along an endless list of problems that give her character a truly detestable tone. Especially if you are a father or a mother, or you are caring for a child. However, the film is not especially violent nor is it a family destruction drama in the best style of Six Feet Under or The Wire. In fact, it is a story told through the sweet, playful, and innocent gaze of the girl, who is also the protagonist.
Set on the outskirts of Orlando, Florida, the film feels like a lost media episode of Breaking Bad. It has a sinister tone but with the colors of a paradise, as the landscapes of that area of the United States usually are. The girl steals, learns to insult, starts fires along with other children, who are her friends, kids just like her, and pulls us, the audience, into personal conflicts that are far from negligible. On the one hand, we know that what she does is not only wrong but outrageous, but on the other hand, we cannot forget that she is a six year old girl who believes the world is like this... Like some kind of open world video game, like Red Dead Redemption 2....
Forgive me if I project too much in my reviews, but A24 has done it once again... It is incredible that every film I see from this production company is better than the previous one. Literally, they only know how to make masterpieces of contemporary cinema. Going back to The Florida Project, the girl does not receive proper care from her mother... Why? Well, because to begin with, the one who is supposed to take care of her, protect her, and pamper her is a young woman in her early twenties. Who engages in prostitution to pay debts in the cheap motels that surround the large Disney theme parks, and clearly is not the functional adult that every child deserves.
She is just another product of the poverty that the United States suffers. A type we do not know much about in our Latin American countries and that is not easy for us to empathize with because we come from extremely conservative cultures and contexts. However, The Florida Project, with its tone halfway between adventure or road trip and raw drama, with shots typical of series rather than films, shows us a raw, cruel, harsh story and how it is perceived by the mind of a girl who only wants to play and make friends in the middle of summer break. I almost forgot about Willem Dafoe, but I had better not tell you more. Just watch the role this acting genius plays in this film. He is simply a master. Do yourselves a favor and go watch The Florida Project 2017. It is worth every minute on screen.
