Florida. The 6-year old girl Moonee lives with her problematic, marijuana-smoking mother Halley in a budget motel near Walt Disney World. Moonee is friends with other kids: Scooty, Dicky and Jancey. The motel manager Bobby has to take care of the tenants, such as restoring electricity after a power failure. Moonee makes a lot of mischief, and when the kids set an abandoned house on fire, Ashley, the mother of Scooty, forbids him to hang around with Moonee again, fearing bad influence from Halley. When Halley starts to work as a prostitute in the apartment to make ends meet, Bobby orders her that any visitor has to register at the counter. The social services arrive to take away Moonee from Halley. Upon hearing that, Moonee and Jancey run away and flee to Disney World.
"The Florida Project" is a sad independent drama about poverty and problematic single mothers told from the child's perspective, in this case Moonee (played by very good Brooklyn Kimberly Prince). The director and screenwriter Sean Baker sets the movie in a budget motel near Disney World, Florida, to contrast the lives of people suffering from real-life issues, while their idealistic perfection (Disney World) is so close, and yet always out of reach, since they don't have money. The first hour of the movie feels chaotic, disorganised, with just random scenes appearing and disappearing (Bobby chasing away three cranes just standing there on the parking lot), yet a lot of them align into a meaning in the last third, when several seemingly random moments (in her apartment, Halley puts on a bikini on herself and her daughter Moonee, and then tells Moonee to make photos of her "posing") are later revealed to have a point and play a role (it turns out Halley posted the photos of herself in a bikini on a website for prostitution, and even though she blurred her face, Ashley recognizes her due to Halley's tattoos visible on the photo). Willem Dafoe plays the kind and patient motel manager Bobby in a good role, though it lacks some more grand character moments. "The Florida Project" is a small, but honest and quality made 'slice-of-life' film that slowly reveals its theme in the third act, where Halley's negligence towards Moonee starts to cause a consequence, all leading to an unforgettable ending about kids' escape from harsh reality into a dream world.
Grade:++
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