Youth, Poverty, and Love: a Review of “The Florida Project”
The Florida Project made me cry. A lot. But the melancholy of the film doesn’t come in the form of death scenes or dramatic angst — rather, tragedy flows through its simplicity and honesty. The Florida Project revolves around the Magic Castle, an exceedingly purple, real-life motel that sits several blocks away from Disney World in Kissimmee, Florida. In the movie, it’s home to extended-stay families who live in poverty, hoping for better lives that never come.
Six-year-old Moonee (Brooklynn Prince), a spirited girl with a crude mouth and a warm heart, lives in the Magic Castle with her twenty-something-year-old mom Halley (Bria Vinaite). Halley is indisputably unfit to be a mother and struggles to pay the $38-a-night fee to live in the motel. With her volatile personality, Halley can’t hold a job, forcing Bobby (Willem Dafoe), the motel manager, to constantly pull strings for Halley and Moonee. Eventually, Halley takes extreme measures to make ends meet, ostracizing her and Moonee from the motel community, and marking the beginning of their downwards plummet.
The Florida Project packs such an emotional punch in large part because of its excellent casting. Vinaite delivers a fiery and vulnerable performance as Halley. Willem Dafoe, at first, plays Bobby as cold and strict, but incrementally reveals his compassion throughout the film before eventually becoming a father figure to Halley and Moonee, though he never admits that he cares for them. And last, but definitely not least, Prince plays Moonee with a level of genius that is unprecedented at such a young age, organically presenting Moonee as both playful and fearless.
By using vibrant colors and natural sunlight, director Sean Baker captures the everlasting brightness of Moonee’s naive, carefree childhood amidst the poverty and strife around her. The Florida Project reminded me so much of my own childhood in Miami, bouncing between any room we could get for the night because we didn’t have the money for anything more. The movie is all-too-real when Halley, desperate to secure the best life for Moonee, goes so far as to use her body to make money. Her decisions backfire and Moonee must live with the consequences, and in the end, the irrevocable bond of love between mother and daughter both endangers and strengthens the two characters.
In one of my favorite scenes of the movie, Halley and Moonee are kicked out of a resort for illegally trying to sell perfumes, a last ditch effort to make some money. On their way home, Moonee complains that her mom is walking too quickly. Halley stops, puts her bags down, and hoists Moonee onto her shoulders, the instinct of a mother kicking in even at financial rock bottom. Halley’s boundless love for her daughter is one of the most striking themes of the film, and this short scene, which captures it perfectly, only began my onslaught of tears.
The Florida Project is about youth, motherhood, and love. It’s about happiness, innocence, and blissful ignorance. It’s about growing up poor and without roots, seeing the chaos of your parent’s confusing and secret lives through the veil of childhood, and never knowing when your life is going to be uprooted again. It’s about what decisions parents will make when they’re desperate to survive, and it’s about the chaste, childish utopia we all long for, but inevitably have to let go of. If The Florida Project is anything, it is real.
