[CRITICAL] THE FLORIDA PROJECT

THE FLORIDA PROJECT draws up, all in colour, the portrait of a society in a precarious trying to make ends meet. Colorful, heartbreaking and brilliant.

At the Magic Castle Motel, this are not the stars of the films of Disney animation that one can experience but of the colorful characters and the freshness communicative. A few kilometers of the giant Disney World, the population precarious of Florida lives in the hotels colourful but cheap to the suburbs of Orlando. An alarming situation that the entertainment giant does not cease to feed.Despite a difficult context due to the extreme poverty of the inhabitants of these motels colorful to the iconography and names that are reminiscent of the giant with big ears, Sean Baker films his characters with dignity, respect, and friendship. A look essential to draw up the portrait of an America deeply precarious, but also that of authentic characters and terribly endearing. Not surprising when one knows that the actor.rice.s of the film have been committed.e.s on-site or on the social networks, except for Willem Dafoe, who plays a manager of motel grumpy but captivating. One way to do that Sean Baker had already put in place for its highly acclaimed Tangerine, where three friend.e.s lived in the Hollywood that is not described on the postcards. A new way to make the word America left behind.

“Although we never see the park, its extravagances are still there and the characters are always at the limit.”

This project, born a few years ago during a trip led by Chris Bergoch, co-writer of the film, Sean Baker has made a film as nuanced and vision multiple. The feature film focuses on a little girl of six years, Moonee, who lives with his mother, Halley, just 22 years old. Our eyes are just on this little girl, or rather they are in this small well-tempered character, to the limit of insolence and always ready to do, with his two buddies of the game, the 400 blows. It then goes very quickly to the decorations in the decor, a bit like you might do in a theme park, where Moonee guide the camera through the facades of glaciers, and other shops which proudly display names ending in Land, referring directly to those that one can find in the friend of Mickey mouse : Fantasyland, Frontierland or Discoveryland. In fact, although we never see the park, its extravagances are still there and the characters are always at the limit as the shows the happy and touching scene of the fireworks.

Follow these children without fears not only allows the filmmaker to new york not to fall into melodrama, sentimental but also to leave to the viewer.rice.s see the extent of the damage caused by the consumer culture. Two visions are striking : children, free and reckless, and that of the parents, who are struggling to make ends meet in between odd jobs poorly paid and dirty tricks not very honest. This second look is like the hidden part of the iceberg. These absent fathers, and these young mothers in need, loving and a fresh, vibrant, and Sean Baker in the film as heroines modern.

Even if the director seems, at first glance, to offer a feature-length film pop, to the tune of summer movie, it gives a boost to the Florida consumer, the world opportunist in revealing the hidden beauty of a population forgotten by the american dream, but who keeps her head high. What you retain the most of these collisions contrasting that is found in THE FLORIDA PROJECT, it is the intelligence of the story and the brilliance of those who do live.

Pauline Mallet

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