The Florida Project is a slice-of-life drama that glimpses into the summer adventures of six-year-old, Moonee, who lives with her rebellious mother, Halley, in the “Magic Castle” motel. Overseeing the entire motel community is the Magic Castle manager, Bobby, who plays the quasi-stern, softhearted, surrogate grandfather to the children and young parents at the motel.
While the motel community toils to come up with the week’s rent and avoid “eviction,” Moonee and her rambunctious crew of friends spend their summer transforming the strip of motels, gift shops, and abandon lots into their personal playground much to the annoyance of Bobby. Moonee’s jovial spirit is learned from Halley who has no shame in having a burping contest with Moonee in public and shopping for faux-jewelry when they make enough money off selling perfumes from thrift store clearance racks. Nothing seems to stand in the way of the ebullient Moonee and her friends. However, as the humid, summer days unfold, the struggles and capriciousness of motel living encroach upon Moonee and her world. Some of Moonee’s friendships are truncated and the consequences of Halley’s means to pay rent jeopardize her relationship with Moonee. Can Moonee find a way to hope and play through these difficult situations?
The plot line alone provides us with enough to experience the protagonist’s joys and pains, yet Baker finds a way to immerse us even deeper into Moonee’s journey through his formal choices. To maintain Moonee’s perspective throughout the film, most scenes are shot on a lower plane, i.e., a child’s eye level, including some scenes where Moonee is not present. Shooting at this level allows us to feel the magical enormity and the occasionally overwhelming aspects of Moonee’s world.
Still, The Florida Project doesn’t romanticize living out of a motel; Baker gives the audience a raw slice of these characters’ lives. Helping with this realistic feel, most of the film lacks a score. All the audience hears are the sounds of everyday life. The music we hear is hip-hop blared through iPhone speakers, the croaks and chirps of central Florida wild life, or the chopping of tour-guide helicopters. Also helping root this film in “our” reality is the deftness with which the actors handle their characters, especially the work of Brooklyn Prince (who plays Moonee). Her stunning, breakout performance will have you wondering if they just followed a kid around with a camera.
The film also avoids objectifying the toil which some slice-of-life films are wont to do. The film is raw but not excessively gritty; While Halley struggles to pay rent, she still is able to find a way to help Moonee celebrate a friend’s birthday and watch the Magic Kingdom fireworks from afar – the most endearing scene for me. While Moonee and her friends have limited resources, they still find a way to celebrate the space around them, like seeing a cow pasture as a safari. Speaking as a native of that part of Central Florida, the film’s rawness captures the beauty of its nature and residents despite their uninviting location. Indeed, The Florida Project is a cinematic exploration into meager and transient spaces of life suggesting that with the eyes of a child we can find beauty, community adventure in such spaces.
The film derives its name from Walt Disney’s endeavor to build Walt Disney World on the flat lands of Kissimmee, Florida, in hopes of mimicking the financial success and popularity of his Southern California theme park, Disney Land. Amongst Disney and his cooperate entourage, the endeavor was known as “The Florida Project,” but cryptically referred to as “Project X” in public documents. After acquiring 27440 acres of land (said to be about twice the size of Manhattan) it was disclosed to the public that Disney’s Florida project was to build another theme park on a more grandiose scale. A chunk of Kissimmee was claimed by “the Mouse,” consequently transforming the periphery residential areas into transient ecosystems of gift shops and motels. It is in this land of transience that Sean Baker’s Florida Project takes place.
Disney’s Florida Project was an attempt to transform a piece of land, home to many people at first, into an escapist utopia for people who could pay to play. It worked for my family. We often frequented Disney World, without giving much attention to the people just outside the Kingdom’s borders. Yet Baker’s Florida Project challenges us to envisage lovable and admirable people in the spaces we breeze past. Places like cheap motels are often perceived as reservoirs of the unattractive and unfortunate, but Baker and crew give us a glimpse into the humanity of these people and places.