Review of The Florida Project (2017) by Sophan P — 20 Oct 2017

The second great movie I've seen this year.

There is astonishing acting on display here, with alternating moments of hilarity from the kids roaming freely along the motel strips of Orlando, and the painful reality of their struggling parents. Mothers, really. It seems weird to describe this condition as some kind of idyll, but from a child's perspective, it's pretty close, when you have good friends to share it with. Of course it can't last, and you see the trajectory bending inevitably toward confrontation with state authorities, regarding the little girl Mooney and her pitiable fuck-up child-like mother. With a kind of horrific sense of anticipation you get from a suspense film, the edits come more quickly, and you have a feeling of queasy intuition that something awful is going to happen. No, everything will definitely not be "all right." But then a little girl knows exactly what her troubled best friend needs, and provides it with a slice of magic.