Butler's Cinema Scene

Willem Dafoe, Brooklynn Prince

“THE FLORIDA PROJECT” My rating: B+

115 minutes | MPAA rating: R

Six-year-old Moonee (Brooklynn Prince) lives in the shadow of Disney World.

Not that she’s ever visited the Magic Kingdom.  Moonee and her mom Halley (Bria Vinaite) are guests/inmates at the Magic Castle, a purple monstrosity of a motel where rooms go for $36 a night and the clientele consists mostly of homeless families struggling to survive in the tourist-oriented economy of central Florida.

It’s not like Moonee feels deprived at never having been up close and personal with Mickey and Donald and all the other Disney characters. She’s the kind of kid who creates her own adventures, and if she often runs afoul of grownups  (people don’t like brats who amuse themselves lobbing phlegm bombs onto other people’s cars), she’s sassy and defiant and seemingly untamable.

Moonee and her  playmates regard the motel complex as their own personal realm, and their pint-size depredations are the bane of the existence of Bobby (Willem Dafoe), the manager forever trying to walk the fine line between corporate dictates and those of his own conscience.

Bobby chastises Moonee and pals for cutting off power to the entire motel by throwing the master switch in the utility room — but even as he does so you can sense that on another level he admires the kids’ lippy defiance.  But he’s also a sort of guardian angel to these mini-Visigoths, quickly swooping down on a pathetically feeble-minded pedophile (Carl Bradford) who hangs around the motel’s swing sets and struggling mightily to cover up Gloria (Sandy Kane), an overpainted septunagerian who insists on sunbathing topless.

Brooklynn Prince,  Bria Vinaite

“The Florida Project” (that’s what Walt Disney called the development that would become Disney World) is only the second film from writer/director Sean Baker, but already he’s staking a claim to be the the cinema’s leading observer of America’s outsiders.

His first feature, “Tangerine,” was a screwball comedy about a transsexual prostitute shot entirely on a cell phone.

“The Florida Project,” though it contains humorous moments, is a far more somber affair, with Baker’s screenplay (co-written with Chris Bergoch) contrasting Moonee’s cocky innocence with her mom’s growing sense of desperation.

Halley is pretty much a kid with a kid (she must have had Moonee when she was 15). She survives by scamming, buying cheap perfume at a dollar store and reselling it to tourists, using Moonee as bait. She relies on a friend who works in a local fast-food joint to provide free meals and isn’t beyond thieving or selling her body to stay afloat. Those flirtations with the illicit lead inevitably to the film’s somber and sobbing conclusion.

“The Florida Project” is thinly plotted — the incidents depicted seem to have happened spontaneously — but it’s thick on atmosphere.

Alexis Zabe’s camera is usually just three feet off the ground, allowing us to see the world from Mooney’s vantage point. The in-your-face tastelessness of Moonee’s environment — shabby strip-mall shops and garish tourist traps — are photographed with a sort of formalism that is simultaneously mildly satiric and weirdly beautiful.

But what makes the picture so memorable are the performances from a cast made up largely of unknowns.

Dafoe, of course, is a seasoned pro, but here he drops anything like pre-meditated technique for a simple, reactive approach that blends seamlessly with the work of the first-timers and non-actors.

Brooklynn Prince, already a professional actress with two earlier features to her credit, is a Oscar-worthy revelation. There’s not a phony moment in her entire performance; nor are we able to see her acting.  She’s a natural, and her Moonee is a marvelous creation, a child of imposing native intelligence who leaves us stranded between indignation and admiration.  Our girl has an impressive vocabulary (even if you don’t count her masterful grasp of profanity) and she has a unique ability to pinpoint the fallacies in adult logic.

You don’t want to go up against her.

But what you really remember is the aura of childlike enthusiasm Mooney carries and shares with her pint-sized co-conspirators (Christopher Rivera, Valeria Cotto). These are kids being kids in the old-fashioned, pre-cell phone sense.

They may be only a day away from eviction and life on the street, yet these youngsters live lives of unfettered exuberance. We’re left trapped between envy and pity.

| Robert W. Butler