Sean Baker’s The Florida Project is “enchanting” The Florida Project powerfully depicts "generations earnestly trying to find a mutual language"

Sean Baker’s latest film is a testament to the power of a child’s imagination in the face of adversity. Set in a struggling motel overshadowed by Walt Disney’s Magical Kingdom, The Florida Project follows the adventures and misfortunes of six-year-old Moonee (Brooklyn Prince) and her friends over a summer. As Moonee’s mother, Halley (Bria Vinaite), becomes increasingly unable to make ends meet, she resorts to desperate means.  Although Moonee remains largely oblivious, it becomes apparent that the options Halley is forced to choose between will have life-changing ramifications for her daughter. In the periphery of Moonee’s escapades a tragedy is unfolding.

What is enchanting about this film is its depiction of both generations earnestly trying to find a mutual language. The adults are as badly behaved as the children and both learn lessons that are infinitely harder than they are prepared for. But by engaging in the intuitive play of their children, the (extremely young) adults find a way of addressing their hardships.

However, as the film continues it transpires that the adults need the children in ways that the children are unaware of and totally unable to provide for. The charm in their awkward mimicry and digressive turns of imagination wears away. Mimicry proves insufficient to the performances that are required of them and the digression become evasions.

The film emphasises that what is redemptive about children is not their innocence but their ability to use their imagination and curiosity as a way of reconciling the loss of their innocence. It shows us how our need to believe in childhood becomes an imposition on the children, and how this imposition exerts a pressure that makes childhood anything but an innocent experience.

The speed of the last scene and abrupt ending draw attention to the artificial and provisional nature of what is ostensibly a ‘happy’ ending. It is a kind of wish-fulfilment, both in the sense that the children get what all children wish for and that it is what the audience and the narrative requires: an affirmation that childhood will prevail against the odds. The end, and the film as a whole, makes us aware of our need for their wish to come true and of our complicity in their bewildering experience of childhood.

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