Hardly any American independent film in recent years has been celebrated as much as Sean Baker’s “Tangerine LA”, a film shot on the iPhone regarding the life of transsexuals in Los Angeles. Although the striking visual style made it something special, the most remarkable thing regarding the drama was the director’s precise documentary look at a special section of American reality, which in its raw, authentic immediacy was even reminiscent of the great works of Italian neorealism. Exactly this quality also has Baker’s new film “The Florida Project‘, the one in the side row Directors’ Fortnight premiered at the Cannes Festival in 2017. In this social drama, the filmmaker tells in an unpretentious but touching way regarding the life of a six-year-old girl who lives with her mother on the edge of subsistence.
The sunny state of Florida is not a paradise everywhere, especially not when you have to live on the meager American social security system and try to keep your head above water with more or less windy business. Despite these difficult circumstances, Halley (Bria Vinaite) tries to be a good mother to her six-year-old daughter, Moonee (Brooklynn Prince). The duo lives in a motel complex called “Magic Castle” (!) where Halley mostly lies in front of the TV and smokes while Mooney roams around with her little friends and makes fools of themselves. Not always to the delight of manager Bobby (Willem Dafoe), who, despite some trouble because of Moonee – and even more Halley – has sympathies for mother and daughter.
For a summer Sean Baker observes his characters, a few weeks in a loose structure, he strings together scenes from a life without imposing a dramaturgical structure on them. The fact that he almost consistently tells the story from the perspective of the girl Mooney is a clever trick, because the meager circumstances of her life seem less dramatic for the six-year-old, her awareness of being on the verge of subsistence level is hardly developed. Instead, Moonee and her friends of the same age roam the motel complex and the surrounding area full of curiosity, go exploring, scrounge ice cream and do what children do. Mooney hardly notices that Moonee and her mother are dependent on alms from a church organization, that Halley earns some money with often somewhat crooked deals, especially since she is in no way neglected by her mother.
As in previous films, Sean Baker observes a distinctive subculture. In “Starlet” it was the porn scene of the San Fernando Valley and then in “Tangerine” the world of transsexuals, in “The Florida Project” it is now the delimited cosmos of a motel whose residents belong to the so-called socially disadvantaged. The director has obviously done his research carefully and shows a keen sense for the peculiarities of this world on the fringes of society. The fact that he once once more mainly works with amateur actors reinforces the impression of absolute authenticity. But a star like Willem Dafoe (“Spider-Man”, “Antichrist”) also fits perfectly into the ensemble. His outsider character serves as a kind of moral compass here. He looks at Moonee and Halley with compassion, tries to protect the mother-daughter duo from the worst and ultimately has to watch helplessly as things develop. Baker resists the temptation to exaggerate the tragic aspects of the story and brings us the problems and conflicts of the observed milieu in a reserved way and with unobtrusive humanity.
Conclusion: As in his previous films, Sean Baker dives into a striking subculture with “The Florida Project” and this time draws an authentic portrait of the poor residents of a run-down motel complex.
We saw The Florida Project at the 2017 Cannes Film Festival where it was in the Directors’ Fortnight will be shown.