Hear Me Out: ‘The Florida Project’ is the greatest coming-of-age movie of the 21st century
Cinema has rarely depicted childhood and coming-of-age stories with the respect and understanding they deserve, especially the lives of young girls. Before the 21st century, these stories typically focused on boys. Although the 1980s marked a period of increased female visibility in teen anecdotes, as evidenced in the controversial work of John Hughes, depictions of female childhood remained few and far between. However, cinema has widened its scope in the past two decades to include significantly more coming-of-age stories about young girls.
In 2017, Sean Baker released his sixth feature-length film, The Florida Project, which centres around a six-year-old girl, Moonee, living in a budget motel near Florida’s Walt Disney World. She resides with her unemployed mother, who eventually resorts to prostitution to make ends meet. Baker’s sensitive approach towards depicting a childhood affected by poverty makes The Florida Project one of the most poignant coming-of-age tales of the 21st century.
Set during a hot summer, Baker welcomes us into the vibrant world of the characters, who live in a brightly-painted block of motel rooms, Magic Castle Inn & Suites, managed by Willem Dafoe’s Bobby. Located just outside Disney World, the setting of Baker’s film highlights a division between the rich and poor. It’s made clear that the children who live in the motel have never visited Disney World, despite its close proximity, because their parents cannot afford it. Thus, The Florida Project highlights a widespread yet underrepresented facet of American society. Countless children live in poverty, unable to experience the delights of childhood that others enjoy, but Baker makes this explicitly clear by setting his film in the direct shadow of the ultimate symbol of childhood fun: Disney.
Baker’s lens is often angled at the same level as the child characters to emphasise their point of view, with adults frequently seen in the background from their waist down. Moonee and her friends, Jancey and Scooty, run around the motel corridors, making their own fun with limited resources. Baker draws parallels between Disney World and the structure of the motel to highlight the richness of childhood imagination. Baker once explained: “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.”
The film’s dedication to preserving the wonders of childhood, no matter the situation, is both moving and hopeful, emphasising the importance of protecting a stage of life that we must move away from as we grow up and discover the harsh realities of adulthood. In The Florida Project, Moonee and her friends are forced to confront life’s ugliness prematurely. Yet, Baker highlights the importance of maintaining childhood innocence and enjoyment for as long as possible in his depiction of the young character’s abilities to use their imaginations to transform the mundane into the fantastical.
Baker’s rich colour palette of purples, pinks, blues and greens reflects the intensity of the children’s imaginations, and watching the film feels like you’ve stepped into a childlike dream world. The kids also walk past shops that look like they’ve been taken straight from a cartoon, such as the Jungle Falls Gift Shop, adorned with a massive Wizard Head, and an orange dome-shaped building called Eli’s Orange World. Baker’s film centres the children’s perspectives, from its framing of adult characters to its unforgettable end scene, which leaves audiences to decide whether what happened is real or just another figment of Moonee’s imagination.
After authorities find out about Moonee’s mother engaging in sex work, the DCF attempt to take the young child away into foster care. However, when she knocks on Jancey’s door to say goodbye, she bursts into tears in the film’s most emotionally devastating moment. Suddenly, Jancey grabs Moonee’s hand, and the pair run away. The movie cuts to a shot of the two running towards the Magic Kingdom in Disney World, which the crew achieved by filming with an iPhone 6s Plus without permission from the park.
Brooklynn Prince performs incredibly in her first-ever acting role as Moonee, embuing her character with the naturalism needed to pull off a part so embedded in reality. The Florida Project blends hard-hitting social commentary with bursts of childish fantasy, giving a fresh perspective on a theme so often explored with excessive bleakness. Baker knows he cannot end poverty with his film, but he finds hope among the ruins, resulting in a movie that will leave you smiling through tears at its bittersweet end.
