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(4.5 / 5)

Lots of major American cities have their quintessential (insert city) movie. Notwithstanding the countless contenders from L.A. and New York, Chicago has The Blues Brothers, Seattle has Singles, Philadelphia has Rocky, New Orleans has A Streetcar Named Desire, and Nashville has, well, Nashville. These are films that not only take place within city limits, but which embody something fundamental about their setting, films in which the city itself becomes a character. But for Orlandoans, unless you count Ernest Saves Christmas, there’s a sense that our city never got its big break.

Could it be that Orlando doesn’t have a strong enough identity to be its own character? After all, Disney World came first, when Central Florida was still mostly orange groves and cow pastures, and the city followed. And indeed, ask 10 people what they know about Orlando, and 9 will tell you it’s home to Disney World. But I want to suggest that in a weird way (and we Floridians are no strangers to weird), that’s its own kind of identity. And it’s that strange identity—of a hastily built urban sprawl with bad infrastructure, the fiefdom of a magical kingdom ruled by a giant mouse—that Sean Baker and company set out to capture in a new movie that I’m proud to call my city’s own: The Florida Project.

Set in Kissimmee, just outside Disney’s castle walls and 20 minutes from Orlando proper, The Florida Project shows us a weird dreamscape where the only thing more lurid than the sunsets are the extended-stay motels. And it’s in one of these “Florida projects” that we find our protagonists, a single mom named Hayley (Bria Vinaite) and her precocious daughter, Mooney (Brooklynn Prince), living week-to-week in a standard two-queen room. Hayley does whatever she can to get by; Mooney just does whatever she wants.

Told through Mooney’s eyes, the story follows her and her friends as they explore the abandoned housing developments, cow pastures, and souvenir shops of Kissimmee, their mischievous escapades intersecting with Hayley’s darker story-line at various points along the way. But when the kids’ antics go from mischievous to misdemeanor, Hayley finds her own story taking an even darker turn.

But even in its darkest moments, The Florida Project never loses its whimsical, cotton-candy-colored sheen. This is a movie about finding wonderment in unexpected places, beauty in depravity, and it’s this sense of contrast that makes the movie work so well. It’s also what makes it the quintessential Orlando movie.

Orlando is a place that exists in a kind of limbo: somewhere between the tropical and temperate zones, between wild and overdeveloped, between magic and squalor. Mooney experiences the wild, magical Orlando, which, by contrast, makes the urban decay and raw depravity of Hayley’s reality all the more affecting.

Both realities are equally valid, and not just because reality is subjective. Orlando truly is a beautiful place if you know where to look. But it’s even more beautiful if you know how to look. And the garish motels and schlocky gift shops are all a part of it. Sean Baker, who co-wrote and directed the Florida Project, smartly doesn’t try to gloss over the seedier parts of Orlando—unless you count high saturation as gloss. Instead, he turns his camera’s neutral eye toward his subjects and shoots without cynicism, judgment, or patronization, showing us that through a mindful, charitable view of the world, we can start to see it for its infinite and awe-inspiring complexity. Through his camera’s, and by extension, Mooney’s, eyes, cow pastures are as exotic as African savannas; abandoned condos are as mysterious as ancient ruins.

Like the setting, the characters in The Florida Project are given an equally fair treatment, letting us see them in their own infinite complexities. Hayley isn’t going to win mother of the year any time soon, but she undoubtedly loves her daughter. Mooney is part mean, part sweet, part charming, part vulgar, part plucky, and, by the end, part scared little girl.

But the real standout performance, for which he earned a well-deserved Oscar nod, is Willem Defoe’s turn as Bobby, the motel’s long-suffering manager and quasi-father figure in Hayley’s and Mooney’s life. Like a good dad, Bobby is equal parts stern and compassionate. He has a soft spot for the destitute residents of the Magic Castle, but knows that showing too much softness is a one-way ticket to chaos and late rent. He scolds the kids one minute and saves them from a deranged predator the next. He threatens to kick Hayley out multiple times only to stand up for her when the owners try to raise her fees. It’s a deeply human performance, and one of the best of Defoe’s career.

Human, in fact, is a good way to describe all the performances in the movie. Sourcing non-professional actors from social media and the local Orlando area, Baker gets the most natural performances I’ve seen since Harmony Korine’s Kids. Admittedly, there are times that the acting feels a little under-directed (see Sandy Kane’s boozy poolside ramblings, for instance), where the improvisation is too noticeable. But for the most part, the actors handle their freedom with laudable restraint and professionalism.

Besides the occasional under-directed performance, only one other slight grievance comes to mind: the ending. Without giving anything away, a cinematographic choice—though to get the shot they wanted, it was a necessary one—at the very end of the movie is so noticeable, and its purpose so transparent, as to be jarring. And if there’s one place you don’t want to take your audience out of the movie, it’s the very end.

But these are small gripes, and overall, the movie overcomes its shortcomings in spectacular fashion. Sean Baker has given us a warm, touching, deeply human portrait of an under-represented population, and of the city of Orlando. Will it go down in history as the quintessential Orlando movie? That’s for time to decide. For now, at least, it sure beats Ernest Saves Christmas.

The Florida Project is available on Amazon Prime Video, YouTube, Vudu, and iTunes.