Sean Baker’s The Florida Project, already screened at Cannes and the New York Film Fest, opens this Friday to rave reviews. Sure to be among the strongest in the critics awards, the pic could also land in the Best Picture race and perhaps finally win an Oscar for Willem Dafoe who takes the lead in the Best Supporting Actor race. AO Scott calls it a critics pick and writes:
“The Florida Project” is honest about the limits of benevolence, and about the wishful thinking that can cloud our understanding of the world. Its final scenes are devastating, and also marvelously ambiguous, full of wonder, fury and cleareyed self-criticism. No magic exists that can make the pain of reality disappear, but we don’t know how to believe in anything else. This movie accomplishes something almost miraculous — two things, actually. It casts a spell and tells the truth.
TIME’s Stephanie Zacharek writes:
Director Sean Baker encouraged his cast to improvise, using Hal Roach’s “Our Gang”shorts as an example of what he wanted. He’s too openhearted a filmmaker to punish us with unleavened realism. The Florida Project is both radiant and unsentimental. When Moonee takes Jancey on a day-trip adventure, the afternoon is almost spoiled by rain—but then the sun comes out as they stand before a field of placid, mooing cows. “See?” Moonee tells her friend. “I took you on a safari.” This magic kingdom of her making becomes ours too.
And LA Times’ Justin Chang writes:
That might be another way of saying that she can see the ending coming, though I’m not sure how anyone could. In its final moments “The Florida Project” makes an astonishing, lyrical leap, one that confirms my sense that Baker is not just an unusually observant filmmaker but also a full-fledged magician, a practitioner of the sublime. He has ventured into a world that few of us know and emerged with a masterpiece of empathy and imagination.
