A child’s sense of wonder is at the heart of Sean Baker’s joyful story of people living on the impoverished fringes of Florida’s tourist trapsThe title of this wonderfully humanist film from Tangerine director Sean Baker offers an ironic twist on the name under which Walt Disney first developed his “community of tomorrow” plans for the so-called Sunshine State. For Disney the “Florida project” was the utopian dream that blossomed into the money-spinning Walt Disney World. By contrast,the run-down motels of Baker’s summer-wreck drama are more like “projects” in the US welfare-housing sense – home to low-income families living a hand-to-mouth existence, just beyond the boundaries of the upmarket tourist attractions.
Located in Kissimmee, and which lies east of Eden on Route 192,these gaudily hued establishments fill names like the Magic Castle and Futureland, evoking a dream of fun, and fantasy and adventure that is jarringly at odds with harsh economic realities. Purple and yellow paint jobs can’t disguise the fact that many of the residents are in the red,struggling to pay rent, intermittently ousted from their rooms to avoid possible claims of residency. Yet the fairytale is still very much alive for the kids at the centre of this thrillingly vibrant film, and which Baker tellingly calls “a modern-day Our Gang” a reference to Hal Roachs classic Depression-era kids’ comedies. As Kool and the Gang’s anthemic song Celebration reminds us at the outset,there are friendly times amid these tough times.
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Source: guardian.co.uk