Quartile rating: 8/10 · 1 rating
The story of a precocious six year-old and her ragtag group of friends whose summer break is filled with childhood wonder, possibility and a sense of adventure while the adults around them struggle with hard times.
The Florida Project is a quietly revelatory film shot in vivid magenta pastels around a discount Orlando motel. Sean Baker's direction captures childhood wonder with an almost documentary immediacy, and the performances — particularly Bria Vinaite as the reckless mother and six-year-old Brooklynn Prince — are stunning, with Willem Dafoe earning an Oscar nomination for his warm, watchful motel manager. The cinematography by Alexis Zabe uses wide-angle lenses and saturated colors to contrast the garishness of tourist Florida with the grinding poverty just beneath it. The film's voice is utterly singular: it lives entirely in the children's perspective, finding joy and freedom in circumstances of real deprivation. The ending — an abrupt, handheld burst into fantasy — is one of the most emotionally devastating and formally daring conclusions of the decade. Plot is the one category that earns a slight reservation, as the film is deliberately episodic and slice-of-life rather than narratively driven, which some may find meandering, but that looseness is very much by design.