Director Sean Baker’s “The Florida Project” is a poetic mass of contradictions, a delicately graceful and harrowingly gritty drama that presents an innocent child’s-eye view of a troubled adult world, a place of heartbreak and poverty in the shadow of the Magic Kingdom.
Despite its perky lavender exterior, the Magic Castle motel in Orlando, Fla., is far short of a magical experience. It’s one of a string of low-rent flophouses across Interstate 4 from the Walt Disney World resort, though it may as well be on the other side of the planet in the lives of the impoverished folks who live there.
Still, for 6-year-old Moonee (played by newcomer Brooklynn Prince), it’s home and it’s the biggest playground a kid could have. Over one summer, the movie shows Moonee and her friends — Scooty (Christopher Rivera), who lives upstairs, and Jancey (Valeria Cotto), who just moved into the motel down the street — playing under the stairs, panhandling for change to buy ice cream and roaming around the abandoned condos nearby. They also have fun tormenting Bobby (Willem Dafoe), the gruff but good-natured building manager.
Moonee also hangs out with her mother, Halley (Bria Vinaite), who’s barely an adult herself. Halley enlists Moonee in various small-scale scams, like selling wholesale perfume to tourists or having Moonee get free waffles from a diner waitress, Scooty’s mom, Ashley (played by dancer Mela Murder). But what Moonee doesn’t see, and we do, is that Halley is in free fall, and her hustling is spiraling into dangerous territory for herself and her daughter.
Baker wowed the movie world two years ago with “Tangerine,” his iPhone-shot portrait of transgender Hollywood street hustlers. With “The Florida Project,” he and writing partner Chris Bergoch open the curtain on an underclass many people often choose to ignore, revealing the small triumphs and wrenching tragedies in their lives.
On the surface, one looks at Moonee as a girl having a fun summer, left to her own devices to explore and experience the world around her. But we also see the threats around her, and we see Halley as a mirror of Mooney’s potential future self, the cycle of poverty and too-young parenthood repeating itself.
Baker uses Dafoe as a lodestar on which everything else revolves, and the veteran actor takes on the part marvelously. Dafoe shows Bobby as a reluctant protector to the kids in the Magic Castle, a father figure for children who have none. Whether he’s shooing herons out of the entryway or forcefully escorting a creepy child predator (Carl Bradfield) off the property, Dafoe conveys the frustration of the hard-luck residents of his motel.
Vinaite, a New York designer whom Baker discovered via Instagram, shows Halley’s fierce devotion to Moonee and her growing anger at her dwindling options. Meanwhile, Prince is completely natural on camera, whether mischievously playing around the hotel or, in the gut-wrenching final scenes, crying her eyes out. These breakout performances give “The Florida Project” its joy, its rage and its overflowing heart.
* * * * <br>The Florida Project<br>A 6-year-old plays through the summer, while her mother struggles, in this gut-wrenching drama in the shadow of Orlando’s fantasy lands.<br>Where • Broadway Centre Cinemas (Salt Lake City).<br>When • Opens Friday, Oct. 20.<br>Rated • R for language throughout, disturbing behavior, sexual references and some drug material.<br>Running time • 111 minutes.