"All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." The legendary sentence, written by Lev Tolstoy in 1877, seems to have put family stories forever into two categories: 1) tragic or 2) a happy ending. But there is actually a very stretchy gray matter in the middle that runs out like a sandwich before you can formulate it. That is, to try to be happy in your misery. To create your own reality that protects you from the world. That's exactly where the filmmaker Sean Baker sinks in his new film, "The Florida Project". His films are always like a submarine in the social slopes, in people you have not encountered, you do not even want, but they fill you with curiosity. And if in his previous independent film "Tangerine" (2015) shot only with the iPhone, the life of two transgender prostitutes and the repulsive world of drugs and violence they inhabit is almost as a documentary with the greatest possible sense of humor , in "The Florida Project" boldly using the original name of the Disneyland Park project, the fairytale has stretched out like a colorful arc over realism in the most unexpected way.
The story tells of the 6-year-old naughty and adventurous Moonee, who lives with her young, lonely, unemployed and mother-tattooed Haley in the "Magic Castle" motel. Although painted in purple color and located on the way to Disneyland, the motel is a shelter for poor homeless people who live there week by week. Their "magical castle" is each of their small rooms, guarding the destinies of many families, criminals, disabled and crazy. And there, in this purple ship of despair, Haley and Moonee live day by day - not as mother and daughter, but as sisters and accomplices. Moonee helps her mother sell perfume at car parks in dear hotels and breaks out to make white with her friends Scooty and Jennie, who always have no consequences because Haley does not fight her and does not punish her. The two of them make the peasants, listen to bastard rap, "torture", pate pizza, sleep till noon and chase in the rain, because everything is fine. And it is not.Haley was a stripper, but as she refused to perform "services" in the back room, she was fired. However, she does not intend to do anything usual and gradually passes exactly to what she had previously pulled. Without maternal authority, responsibility and attention, the inevitability of separation between the two is predictable. The social will come and the little one will run away, but there is still time. Previously, we will meet Moonee's friends, travel with them through car parks and roads to their fictional oases and kingdoms. The places where they are begging ice cream spark fires, spit on cars, or imagine they are on a safari.
We will also meet Bobby (Willem Dafoe, the motel manager, the guardian of the Magic Castle, with enough goodness, humanity, and normality to be the glue between the world that "manages" and the real outside of the door to its tenants each week along with the bill. Willem Dafoeeasily combines this friendly, paternal, and mentor figure in an unobtrusive and emotional way. His performance was not passed by the Academy this year and was nominated for an Oscar for a supporting role. By the end, "The Florida Project" does not feel like a movie, but as a voyeur look at the lives of these people. The camera works, and we are only witnesses. That's why Sean Baker always chooses to include unprofessional actors in his projects as well. Such a hit here has installed the Bria Vinaite model as Haley. When Baker sees her on the social network, he uses it as a reference in her casting and wants "someone from Hollywood to carry this carefree and rebellious radiance," until he realizes he does not need "someone like her" . He writes a message with a suggestion that Bria herself says she initially considered "a perverse joke." Little Brooklyn Prince as Moonee turns out to be a "veteran" in their duo, and the extraordinary chemistry among them is one of the major magical ingredients of the film. Here, somewhere, the association with Andrea Arnold's "American Honey" is still concreting. The English director, equally affectionate to social outsiders, finds her free-to-be-old star, 18-year-old Sasha Lane, while watching her walk around the beach. But it's not just casting. The American Honey microcosm is built from the same dusty and heated car parks and motels, in which the already growing Moonee and the others naturally become part of Arnold's history. And what we thought was the childhood of her characters, finds her answers in Shawn Baker's film.
The operatic work of Alexis Zabbe shows a fantastic sky above Florida in all its sunsets, rainfall, clouds and light. The racings launch our perceptions of characters and history through the level of children's eyes and manage to "color" events in a variety of shades. Only Moonee's final scene was shot with a phone. Effective enough to perceive it as an illusion of the little one, maybe it really happened? Childhood turns out to be the ice-melting ice cream. And then only the spots of memories stick. Because even the abandoned, the unruly, the lush and the miserable can fulfill the absurdity and the ugly world with miracles. A super force that only childhood gives, and so the biggest tragedy is that sometimes we can not hold it while we are still small. When the film began, little Christopher Rivera, who plays Scooty, has been exclaiming all along while looking at Willem Dafoe: "I can not believe I'm working with Green Goblin!" Reality exists. The world is as we see it.