The Florida Project 4K 2017 Ultra HD 2160p

The focus is on an ill-mannered but charming 6-year-old girl named Moonee, who lives with her mother Hayley in a modest motel in Cassimmi, Florida, not far from Disneyland. While her wayward mother tries to make ends meet by various, often illegal means, the girl is left to her own devices all day long. Together with the neighborhood children, Moonee wanders around the neighborhood unsupervised and without a specific goal, bullying and being rude to those around her. However, the motel manager is patient and sympathetic towards his guests. Many tourists often confuse the motel with the official hotel of the amusement park, which leads them into absurd and comical situations. In addition, various incidents regularly occur at the motel, forcing guests and residents to forget about boredom. While Moony's mother, like the other single mothers living in the motel, works as a waitress, the girl herself, together with her friends Scooty and Yensi, seeks new adventures.

User Review

I decided to watch The Florida Project (2017) solely because of the combination of Sean Baker and Caleb Landry Jones. Neither of them interested me individually, but I wanted to see their joint work. I know Caleb from Luc Besson's Dogman, and I learned about Sean at the end of 2024 thanks to his Cannes hit Anora. But here I found neither the Caleb I was used to (he has a completely episodic and empty role here), nor the expected vibes of Anora. Instead, I saw something completely different.

This is only the second Baker film I've seen. I only watched it now, by the way. Before that, I had only seen his film from last year. And I will say that The Florida Project is radically different from Anora in almost every way. I didn't see anything in common between these two films; The Florida Project is completely different. In spirit, it's more like an independent film than a movie about an expensive Manhattan stripper.

My first association when watching the film was with The Grand Budapest Hotel. I even thought about calling my review “The Grand Budapest for the Poor” or “The Grand Budapest Motel.” The resemblance was prompted by the lilac color of the hotel and the presence of Willem Dafoe in the frame. However, there is no lavish European glamour in the style of “expensive and rich” here, although The Project... cannot be called a cheap and poor film. Still, the visuals turned out to be aesthetic/aesthetic. *Not a motel, but some kind of mental hospital*

I really liked the character named Haley, who is the mother of the main character, because I identified with her. Although I am not a mother, a hustler, or a sex worker, I somehow saw myself reflected in this woman. Because she is not perfect.

Hayley is not a glamorous New York prostitute with a perfect figure and super-glamorous clothes. She is just a dysfunctional mother who barely makes ends meet but loves her daughter with all her heart. She is a modern parent who is on the same wavelength as her child. She spoils Mooney as much as her modest means as a single mother allow.

But what made me particularly fond of her was precisely the fact that she is not idealized. She is shown as she is. And in this she is very close to me. She is quick-tempered: first she does something very bad without thinking it through, and then she has to deal with the consequences. That's me too.

The downsides include not so much the lengthiness, but the general meaninglessness of many scenes. There is no action here, I'll say that right away. Ninety percent of the screen time is devoted to filming routine, everyday life, from the series “what I see, I sing.” That is, some kind of dull chronicle of everyday life: here are children going for ice cream three hundred times, here they are discussing some nonsense. The narrative is very measured, picking up speed somewhere in the second half of the film.

It's a big question why Willem Dafoe was nominated for an Oscar for his role in this film. Apparently, they just wanted to honor him with a nomination for a long time and didn't care what role it was for. Because he didn't show anything special here. His character is a strict, stuffy, meticulous motel manager who stays on the sidelines when things get tough.

The girl who played the lead role is also very touching. I was very happy when I realized that she would be the main character, and not the “good” red-haired Cinderella girl. In the sense that in this film, the main character is not the modest Cinderella, but her nasty stepsister. Hayley and Moonee are two anti-heroines. In any other, more commercial films, they would have been portrayed in a bad light. And here they are portrayed in a bad light, but there is a difference: Sean Baker showed them as characters worthy of sympathy. He revealed their tragedy without making them good and righteous.

And the ending is heartbreaking. Sean Baker, as I understand it, is a fan of semi-open endings. I was very sad.

Info Video

Codec: HEVC / H.265 (80.3 Mb/s)
Resolution: 4K (2160p)
HDR: Dolby Vision, HDR10
Aspect ratio: 2.40:1
Original aspect ratio: 2.39:1

Info Audio

#English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1
#English: Dolby Digital 2.0 (Commentary by director/co-writer/editor/producer Sean Baker, co-writer/producer Chris Bergoch and cinematographer Alexis Zabe)
#English: Dolby Digital 2.0 (Commentary by film critics Kat Ellinger and Martyn Conterio)

Info Subtitles

English SDH, Arabic, Catalan, Chinese (Hong Kong / Traditional), Chinese (Traditional), Chinese (Taiwan / Traditional), Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French (Parisian), German, Italian, Japanese, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese (Brazilian), Romanian, Russian, Spanish (Castilian), Spanish (Latin American), Swedish, Turkish.