The Florida Project | |
---|---|
Directed by | Sean Baker |
Written by |
|
Produced by |
|
Starring |
|
Cinematography | Alexis Zabe |
Edited by | Sean Baker |
Production companies |
|
Distributed by | A24 |
Release dates |
|
Running time | 111 minutes [1] |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Budget | $2 million [2] |
Box office | $11.3 million [3] |
The Florida Project is a 2017 American drama film directed by Sean Baker and written by Baker and Chris Bergoch. Starring Bria Vinaite, Brooklynn Prince, and Willem Dafoe, with Valeria Cotto, Christopher Rivera, and Caleb Landry Jones, in supporting roles, it was the first film appearance for many of the cast members. The slice of life plot focuses on the summertime adventures of a six-year-old girl who lives with her unemployed single mother in a budget motel in Kissimmee, Florida. Their struggle to make ends meet and stave off homelessness takes place in a surreal environment dominated by the nearby Walt Disney World, which was code named "The Florida Project" during its early planning stages. [4] It juxtaposes this with the local residents' less glamorous day-to-day lives, and also the children's joyful adventures as they explore and make the most of their surroundings, while remaining blissfully ignorant of the true hardships which their adult caretakers face. [5]
The film premiered in the Directors' Fortnight section of the 2017 Cannes Film Festival, and was released theatrically in the United States by A24 on October 6, 2017. It was acclaimed by critics, [6] who, alongside praising Baker's direction, praised the performances; Vinaite earned particular acclaim for her performance, Prince's work would earn her a Critics' Choice Movie Award for Best Young Performer, while Dafoe was adjudged to have given "his finest performance in recent memory", [7] receiving Best Supporting Actor nods at the Oscars, Golden Globes, SAG Awards, Critics Choice Awards and BAFTA Awards. [8] [9]
Both the National Board of Review and the American Film Institute chose the film as one of the top ten films of the year. [10] [11]
Moonee, a six-year-old girl, lives with her young, single mother, Halley, at Magic Castle Inn and Suites, a budget motel in Kissimmee, Florida, near Walt Disney World. Moonee spends most of her summer days unsupervised and making mischief with her downstairs neighbor, Scooty, whom Halley was supposed to watch while his own mother, Ashley, worked as a waitress at a diner, and Dicky, who lives at the nearby Futureland Inn. After Stacy, a new resident at Futureland, catches the trio spitting on her car, Dicky is grounded for a week, and Moonee and Scooty meet and befriend Stacy's granddaughter, Jancey, who lives with Stacy.
Halley has recently lost her job as a stripper after not wishing to do sexual acts for clients, but this now affects her eligibility for TANF benefits; she begins relying on food that Ashley gets from work. Struggling to pay the rent, Halley begins selling knockoff perfume to tourists in the parking lots of up-market hotels. Meanwhile, Moonee and Scooty show Jancey around the neighborhood and teach her things, like how to get free ice cream by begging. They regularly inconvenience Bobby, the manager of Magic Castle, such as when they shut off the motel's power. Despite this, he remains protective of them. Bobby's duties at Magic Castle include preparing expense reports, ejecting drug dealers, and doing repairs; he sometimes enlists the help of his son, Jack, whom he has a tenuous relationship with.
After Dicky's family moves to New Orleans, Scooty finds a lighter in a box that Dicky's family left behind; he, Moonee, and Jancey start a fire at an abandoned condominium complex. Ashley gets the truth out of Scooty, after which she forbids him from hanging out with Moonee or Jancey; Ashley also stops talking to Halley.
Without the free food from Ashley, and with security guards beginning to bother her at the hotels, Halley's financial situation declines even further. Having no other choice, she begins soliciting her sex work online, keeping Moonee in the bathroom with loud music when she has a client. When Halley steals a client's Disney World resort passes to scalp them, the man later returns to demand his property back. Bobby, alerted by the loud arguing, scares him off but applies restrictions on unregistered guests in her motel room; he also warns Halley that he will evict her if her prostitution continues. Out of desperation, Halley approaches Ashley to apologize and ask for money. Ashley then criticizes Halley's job as a sex worker; enraged, Halley grabs Ashley and viciously beats her in front of Scooty.
The next day, DCF investigators show up and question Halley and Moonee separately about their lifestyle. In anticipation of another visit, Halley gives away her weed and has Moonee help clean their room. They go to a fancier hotel and have an extravagant meal, which Halley charges to a guest's room. When they return to Magic Castle, the investigators, having found evidence of Halley's sex work, are waiting with two police officers to take Moonee into foster care while they finish their inquiry. Not fully understanding what is happening, Moonee asks to say goodbye to Scooty, who lets slip that she is going to a new family. Upset, Moonee runs away from the investigators to bid Jancey goodbye. Jancey, seeing her friend's distress, grabs Moonee's hand and the two run away to the Magic Kingdom theme park at Walt Disney World.
The film stemmed from writer Chris Bergoch noticing a lot of children playing in motel parking lots while visiting his mother in Orlando, Florida. For his part, Sean Baker has said he has always been inspired by the Our Gang films, because the characters "were actually living in poverty, but the focus was the joy of childhood, the humor that comes from watching and hearing children." [12] [13]
In December 2017, producer Andrew Duncan stepped down from his role as financier of June Pictures after numerous allegations of sexual harassment. [14] Baker stated, in part: "While we did not witness nor have any knowledge of inappropriate behavior, we are of course deeply concerned about these allegations. I have been outspoken before and firmly believe that film sets and work environments absolutely must be safe spaces for everyone regardless of gender, age, race, or creed." [15] [16]
The Florida Project was filmed in the summer of 2016 on location in Osceola County, Florida, [17] including at the real Magic Castle Inn & Suites located on U.S. Highway 192 in Kissimmee, which is nearly six miles from Walt Disney World. [18]
Unlike Baker's previous film, which was shot with an iPhone, The Florida Project was filmed using 35mm film, except for the final scene, which was shot without authorization in Disney World's Magic Kingdom park using an iPhone 6S Plus. [19] [20] To maintain secrecy, the shoot at the resort used a skeleton crew consisting of Baker, Bergoch, cinematographer Alexis Zabe, acting coach Samantha Quan, actors Valeria Cotto and Brooklynn Prince, and the girls' guardians. [20] Baker intended the ending to be open to audience interpretation: "We've been watching Moonee use her imagination and wonderment throughout the entire film to make the best of the situation she's in—she can't go to Disney's Animal Kingdom, so she goes to the 'safari' behind the motel and looks at cows; she goes to the abandoned condos because she can't go to the Haunted Mansion. And in the end, with this inevitable drama, this is me saying to the audience, if you want a happy ending, you're gonna have to go to that headspace of a kid because, here, that's the only way to achieve it." [20]
The film had its world premiere on May 22, 2017, in the Directors Fortnight section of the 2017 Cannes Film Festival, [21] [22] and A24 acquired the U.S. distribution rights shortly thereafter. [23] Its limited theatrical release in the U.S. began on October 6, 2017. [24] Lionsgate released the film on Blu-ray, DVD, and download.
The Florida Project received critical acclaim upon its release, with particular praise given to the direction and the performances of Dafoe, Prince, and Vinaite. On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, it has an approval rating of 96% based on 320 reviews, with an average rating of 8.8/10; the site's "critics consensus" reads: "The Florida Project offers a colorfully empathetic look at an underrepresented part of the population that proves absorbing even as it raises sobering questions about modern America." [25] On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 92 out of 100 based on reviews from 44 critics, indicating "universal acclaim". [26]
Ann Hornaday of The Washington Post wrote that "Dafoe delivers his finest performance in recent memory, bringing to life a levelheaded, unsanctimonious character who offers a glimmer of hope and caring within a world markedly short on both." [27] Richard Roeper of the Chicago Sun-Times wrote: "It's film that'll make you wince at times, and you'll most likely not want to see twice, but seeing it once is an experience you'll not soon forget." [28]
The Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow, shortened to EPCOT or E.P.C.O.T., was an unfinished concept for a planned community, intended to sit on a swath of undeveloped land near Orlando, Florida. It was created by Walt Disney in collaboration with the designers at Walt Disney Imagineering in the 1960s. Based on ideas stemming from modernism and futurism, and inspired by architectural literature about city planning, Disney intended EPCOT to be a utopian autocratic company town. One of the primary stated aims of EPCOT was to replace urban sprawl as the organizing force of community planning in the United States in the 1960s. Disney intended EPCOT to be a real city, and it was planned to feature commercial, residential, industrial, and recreational centers, connected by a mass multimodal transportation system, that would, he said, "Never cease to be a living blueprint of the future".
Cinderella is a 1950 American animated musical fantasy film produced by Walt Disney Productions and released by RKO Radio Pictures. Based on Charles Perrault's 1697 fairy tale, it features supervision by Ben Sharpsteen. The film was directed by Wilfred Jackson, Hamilton Luske, and Clyde Geronimi. The film features the voices of Ilene Woods, Eleanor Audley, Verna Felton, Rhoda Williams, James MacDonald, and Luis van Rooten.
Disney Experiences, commonly known as Disney Parks, is one of the three major divisions of The Walt Disney Company. It was founded on April 1, 1971, exactly six months before the opening of Walt Disney World.
Remember... Dreams Come True was a Disneyland fireworks display commemorating the 50th anniversary of the park in 2005 and 2006. The show featured fireworks, lower level pyrotechnics, isobar flame effects, projection mapping, lasers, searchlights, and lighting set to the soundtracks of some of Disneyland's rides and shows.
Mickey's Very Merry Christmas Party is a Walt Disney World event hosted at Magic Kingdom in Orlando, Florida on select evenings in November and December leading up to Christmas. It features holiday entertainment including a parade, dance parties, character meet-and-greets, and complimentary treat stations. The event runs from 7:00 pm to midnight, but party guests may enter beginning at 4:00 pm. The event requires purchasing a separate ticket from the general admission ticket counter.
Vera Ann Farmiga is an American actress. Farmiga began her professional acting career on stage in the original Broadway production of Taking Sides (1996). After expanding to television and film, Farmiga's breakthrough came in 2004 with her starring role as a drug addict in the drama Down to the Bone. She received praise for starring in the 2009 comedy-drama Up in the Air, for which she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.
Sean Baker is an American film director, cinematographer, producer, screenwriter and editor. He is best known for the independent feature films Starlet (2012), Tangerine (2015), The Florida Project (2017), and Red Rocket (2021), as well as the Fox/IFC puppet sitcom Greg the Bunny and its spin-offs.
Shih-Ching Tsou is a Taiwan-born film producer, director, and actress. She co-directed the film Take Out (2004) with Sean Baker. She also produced Baker's other films Starlet (2012), Tangerine (2015), The Florida Project (2017) and Red Rocket (2021).
Celebrate the Magic was a nighttime show at the Magic Kingdom park of Walt Disney World, that premiered on November 13, 2012. It replaced The Magic, the Memories and You display, a similar show that ran at the Magic Kingdom and Disneyland from January 2011 to September 4, 2012.
Anna of Arendelle is a fictional character who appears in Walt Disney Animation Studios' computer-animated fantasy film Frozen (2013) and its sequel Frozen II (2019). She is voiced by Kristen Bell as an adult. At the beginning of the film, Livvy Stubenrauch and Katie Lopez provide her speaking and singing voice as a young child, respectively. Agatha Lee Monn portrayed her as a nine-year-old (singing). In Frozen II, Hadley Gannaway provided her voice as a young child while Stubenrauch is the archive audio.
Cinderella is a Disney franchise that commenced in 1950 with the theatrical release of the 1950 film Cinderella. The series' protagonist is Cinderella, who was based on the character of the same name from the Cinderella fairy tale.
Chris Bergoch is an American screenwriter and producer, known for having co-written the films The Florida Project, Tangerine and Starlet as well as writing on the television shows Greg the Bunny and Warren the Ape.
Once Upon a Time was a nighttime spectacular at Magic Kingdom, which was originally known in Magic Kingdom as its full name, Once Upon A Time: Where Stories Take You Anywhere and formerly at Tokyo Disneyland. Similar to Celebrate the Magic and Disney Dreams!, the Tokyo show premiered on May 29, 2014, and utilizes fireworks, lasers, fire, projection mapping, and searchlights during the 19-minute presentation. The Magic Kingdom version is shorter and utilizes less pyrotechnics and no fire.
Dog Eat Dog is a 2016 American action thriller film directed by Paul Schrader with a screenplay by Matthew Wilder, based on Edward Bunker's 1995 novel of the same name. The film stars Nicolas Cage and Willem Dafoe.
Tron Lightcycle Power Run and Tron Lightcycle / Run are semi-enclosed, launched roller coasters at Shanghai Disneyland and Magic Kingdom in Walt Disney World. The first incarnation, Tron Lightcycle Power Run, opened at Shanghai Disneyland on June 16, 2016. A nearly-identical installation, Tron Lightcycle / Run, opened at Magic Kingdom in Walt Disney World on April 4, 2023. Both are in the Tomorrowland themed areas at each park.
The One and Only Ivan is a 2020 American fantasy drama film directed by Thea Sharrock from a screenplay written by Mike White based on the 2012 children's novel of the same name by Katherine Applegate. Inspired by the true story of Ivan the gorilla, the film stars the voices of Sam Rockwell as Ivan alongside Angelina Jolie, Danny DeVito, Helen Mirren, Brooklynn Prince, Chaka Khan, Ron Funches, Phillipa Soo, and Mike White, with the human characters portrayed by Ramón Rodríguez, Ariana Greenblatt, and Bryan Cranston.
The 22nd San Diego Film Critics Society Awards were announced on December 11, 2017.
Bria Vinaite is a Lithuanian-born American actress, best known for her debut role as Halley in Sean Baker's 2017 film The Florida Project.
Brooklynn Prince is an American child actress known for her roles as Moonee in the comedy-drama film The Florida Project (2017) and Hilde Lisko in the Apple TV+ series Home Before Dark (2020–2021).