The Florida Project Shines a Bright Light into a Very Dark Place

SARASOTA – As soon as I saw a trailer for The Florida Project, an indy film by rising director Sean Baker (Tangerine) that was shot in Kissimmee, I was excited to see it. Set in the post-recession underbelly of suburban Orlando, it tells the little-known story of a nearly invisible but growing segment of our society.

Six-year old Moonee (Brooklynn Prince) and her single mom Halley (Bria Vinaite) live week to week in The Magic Castle, a real and almost impossibly purple motel on the low-end, budget-themed corridor of Irlo Bronson Parkway on the wrong side of I-4, opposite the Disney parks. Littered with $35 a night rooms in older motels that also rent by the week, the strip is also home to an endless array of low-end souvenir shops, discount ticket brokers and cheap, volume-oriented eateries. It’s hard to drive down it without the word seedy coming to mind.

The film’s title is a play on words. The Florida Project was the internal name for Walt’s Orlando theme park venture, used within the Disney company while it was being conceived. But such motels have also become de facto housing projects throughout much of Florida, including Manatee County. Anyone from day laborers to struggling services workers, many of whom lost homes and jobs during the Great Recession, might use the furnished, all-inclusive rooms as a home when the security deposit, credit check and furnishings for an apartment are financially out of reach.

Prince, the daughter of an Orlando acting coach, is cute beyond words and turns in a career-making performance in her debut role. Baker, who’s known for casting non-actors he finds on the streets of his locations (of which the film has several), cast Vinaite after he’d used her Instagram photos to convey to potential actresses what he was looking for but couldn’t find one to quite pull it off. She too turns in the kind of performance that should ensure her steady work if she chooses to stay in the field.

The only name actor cast is Willem Dafoe, one of Hollywood’s most underrated supporting males, who gives one of his best performances in years, one that could earn him some nominations come award season. Dafoe plays Bobby, the motel’s manager, who has the nearly-impossible job of keeping the held-together-by-a-thread ecosphere from falling apart, but somehow manages the assortment of misfits and their misdemeanors with an impressive modicum of heart.

The movie is not long on plot, more of a slice of life, if you will. But some of the scenes are so cringeworthy that watching them can almost feel pornographic. Halley is an utter train wreck as both a mother and a member of civilized society, and while she never so much as raises her voice to her foul-mouthed daughter, who is herself utterly without boundaries or filter, you find yourself rooting for the inevitable DCF intervention long before it arrives.

When the film ended, it was hard to say whether it was good in any conventional sense. A few people had walked out during dicier parts and those who remained sat in almost stunned silence before they started shuffling off during the silent credits that follow a somewhat surreal ending–one that leaves you with little hope for either mother or daughter. The closing sequence seems to suggest that the daughter’s fate is doomed to repeat that of the mother, but that seemed apparent 15 minutes in.

What really struck me was how much I thought about the characters and their lives for days after the film, and that sort of haunting provocation is ultimately Baker’s stock and trade. He doesn’t tell stories, so much as instigate introspection, and anyone who can have you thinking that much about his film that long after you’ve seen it has obviously realized his ambitions for it.

The cinematography is gorgeous and anyone who’s ever spent much time in the outer confines of Disney’s realm will recognize the settings, even if only from their similarity to others in the area. I have quite a bit of experience on Iro Bronson Parkway, myself. When my son was very young and I was a recently-divorced single dad struggling to get by as a freelance writer, we didn’t have the money for the traditional Disney experience. I’ve always had a flair for low-budget adventure, so on several occasions we traipsed over to Kissimmee for a night, where a hundred bucks could cover gas, a room not unlike the one in the film, a couple of sturdy meals at Golden Coral or Pollo Tropicale, and a souvenir from one of the knock-off shops. A quick tour of a timeshare provided my ticket, then I’d have to explain why I told the "cast member" at the gate that he was two, long after we’d celebrated his third birthday.

We never stayed at the Magic Castle, but we stayed at a couple that were within a stone’s throw and equally cheap and spartan. Nevertheless, those remain some of the very best memories of his childhood for me. Pillow fights, motel pools and extra sprinkles on our ice creams from the buffet line, after filling up on salty meats and runny bread pudding.

Watching Moonee and her crew of incorrigible delinquents scrounge change for a shared soft-serve ice cream was a tender nod to innocence that you could sense would all too soon be taken away. These kids make the best of a bad situation, but their resistance seems futile. At one point, she takes a friend to her favorite spot, an enormous mossy oak that had been pulled from the earth by a storm. "It’s my favorite because it’s uprooted, but it’s still growing," she explains, providing the perfect metaphor for herself and perhaps the film at large.

The Florida Project

Regal Hollywood Stadium 20

Sarasota

1:20pm

4:15pm

7:10pm

10:00pm