The Florida Project (2017)

THE FLORIDA PROJECT  (2017)  ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢
    D: Sean Baker
    Willem Dafoe, Brooklyn Kimberly Prince, Bria Vinaite,
    Valeria Cotto, Christopher Rivera, Jose Olivo,
    Aiden Malik, Mela Murder, Carl Bradfield, Sandy Kane
This is a movie about life on the skids, or at best on the margins. The setting's a shabby, live-in motel, a decaying, lavender-painted palace almost literally in the shadow of Disney World. That's where a young girl named Moonee (Brooklyn Prince) lives with her mom, Halley (Bria Vinaite), a stripper who's just lost her job at the club because she won't turn tricks on the side. Presiding over the complex and barely holding its rundown parts together is Bobby (Willem Dafoe), the property manager, who has to answer to the building's owner, while dealing with power outages, broken appliances and a lot of desperate tenants who may or may not be able to make next week's rent. A lot of the movie focuses on Moonee and her friends, who run around with minimal parental supervision, getting into whatever trouble a bunch of six-year-olds can, testing Bobby's weary patience, and treating the motel and its surroundings as their personal playground. It's hard to tell how much of this was scripted and how much was just Baker telling the kids, "Go play and we'll follow you around with a camera for a while." Either way, the kids are remarkable, especially the brash, precocious Prince. You watch Moonee in her scenes with Halley, and you wonder who's the kid here, because they both are. Then you look at her environment and her likely prospects, and you wonder whether her life will turn out any different than her mom's. The hope for something better, like the fantasy world she escapes to in the end, might as well be a million miles away.