Film Night: The Florida Project (Review)

For my latest film night I watched something which I had never heard of, a movie called The Florida Project. I watched a trailer for this a few weeks ago, and added it to my watch list for things to see in the near future. I finally did, and what a great film it is!

The film centres around a 6 year old girl, Moonee, who is a tough and rebellious kid, living with her mother Halley in a cheap motel in Florida, close to Walt Disney World. They are fairly poor, and do whatever it takes to make a little money to pay their rent, eat and live a basic life without being made homeless.

Moonee spends her days with her friends from the motel park, Dicky and Scooty, getting into trouble as kids do, when they go to another motel and spit on a resident’s car, who turns out to be Josie who has her granddaughter living with her, Jancey. Dicky gets in trouble with his dad for the incident, but Moonee and Scooty don’t and Dicky isn’t allowed to play with them for a while. He later moves away with his dad to New Orleans.

Josie demands that the kids wash the car, and they become friends with Jancey, with Halley becoming friends with Josie.

Halley is always struggling to pay the rent, and gets her friend Ashley, who is Scooty’s mother, to steal food for them from the restaurant where she works. Jancey, Scooty and Moonee go to an abandoned condo block and start a fire in a room, which escalates and turns into a huge fire and the fire brigade are called. They promise not to tell anyone, but Scooty tells his mother. She distances Scooty from Moonee, and tells them they can’t have any more free food.

Halley is still trying to earn money, illegally selling boxes of perfume out of car parks of rich nearby places. She then turns desperate, offering services online to men. When the manager finds out he demands that she signs in any guests. Now even more desperate, she turns to her old friend Ashley. When Ashley mocks her for being a prostitute, she beats her up in from of Scooty.

The police and department of children and families turn up to take Moonee into foster care and away from Halley. Moonee is told to wait with the woman, but is not happy and escapes her, and runs off, and goes to see Jansey. Standing at her door, she’s terrified and thinks she’ll never see Jansey again, and bursts into tears. The girls go hand in and running, and go to the magic kingdom at Disney World.

My Thoughts

I loved this film! It was brilliant. Almost all of the cast had not acted in a film before, which was brilliant and kept it raw which is what I love about it. The manager of the motel, Bobby played by Willem Defoe who was fantastic in this role, I loved the character. I am glad that I sat down to watch this, it’s a really good film that I could easily watch again. The ending is slightly unusual as it’s quite open-ended in that you don’t get to see what happens next, but after thinking about it, I think I kind of like that.