Plot Summary – Set in the shadow of the most magical place on Earth, 6-year-old Moonee and her two best friends forge their own adventures, while Moonee’s struggling mom and a kindhearted motel manager protect the kids from the harsh reality that surrounds them.

★★★★★ 

Watched 25 Oct, 2020

I haven’t resonated with a film this much in a long time. Firstly, I was completely entranced by the atmosphere of this film. I haven’t felt this absorbed by the aesthetic or the vibe of a film since Call Me By Your Name. While CMBYN takes place in beautiful rural Italy, The Florida Project takes place in a disgusting part of Orlando right outside Disney World and yet it’s framed so beautifully and the shots are so brilliantly composed that you feel like you’re in heaven. What Sean Baker does so brilliantly in this film is capture hard topics like poverty, drugs, sex and other important issues through the eyes of a 6-year-old child. Brooklynn Prince gives the best child acting performance I’ve ever seen. Willem Defoe seems so huggable and plays just the most likeable character I’ve seen in film in such a long time. Halley is played by an Instagram model who Baker just found and she gives such an incredible performance that I was dumbfounded when I found out she’s played by a debutant. I’ll admit that this isn’t a film for everyone. If you don’t have an appreciation for cinema and storytelling, you’ll find the first two acts of this film boring and pointless. It’s in this ‘boring’ section of the film that it’s brilliance really lies. It perfectly captures the monotony and the inescapablity of poverty while portraying the innocence of childhood. In Moonee and Halley, you see the past and future. In a way, they are the same character, just in different ages which is what makes their dynamic so interesting and complex. You can see that this cycle and pattern is a generational problem and it is scary to see how many elements of Halley are reflected in Moonee. While the ending was heavily criticized, the bittersweet nature of it and the overall urgency was masterfully handled in my opinion. I loved The Florida Project and I highly recommend it to those who have a finer appreciation for film than what is present at face value.