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cineSOURCE Darlings Create Stir at Cannes by Doniphan Blair
Willem Dafoe and Brooklynn Prince star in 'The Florida Project', the recent film from Sean Baker. photo: courtesy S. Baker
EVEN THOUGH 'THE FLORIDA PROJECT'
appeared in the Director's Fortnight, not the regular Cannes International Film Festival, which just finished May 28th, it's the talk of the town, the number one on a lot of critics' lists, including Indie Wire, and an early pick up for distro. After a minor bidding war, possession was taken by A24, which specializes in distributing iconoclastic indies, including last-year's Oscar-winner “Moonlight”.
"The Florida Project" stars Oscar-nominee Willem Defoe (kudos Will!), the first big name actor to star in a film directed by Sean Baker, who often works with non- or lessor-known actors. Set in a trashy South Florida motel, "The Florida Project" follows a bunch of six-year-olds, the kids of hookers, dealers and day laborers, who run rampant 'round the joint.
While "Moonlight"'s director Barry Jenkins (another cineSOURCE early-find, see article) grew up in the Miami housing projects depicted in his film, Baker and his story developer, writer and producer Chris Bergoch follow the opposite dictum:
"Write what you don't know."
But then immerse yourself in the culture, find informants who might also be interested in playing characters, and fashion with them a penetrating and honest story. For the "Prince of Broadway" (2008), Baker, Bergoch and their collaborators hung out on the streets of New York's fashion district for over a year.
Eventually, they came upon Prince Adu, a charismatic African immigrant hustler, who specialized in knock-off sneakers as well as happened to be an actual prince, and enlisted him to star. Dramatic gears shifted radically when Adu, essentially playing himself, is surprised by an old girlfriend, who shows up with a kid, insists it is Adu's and then splits.
In a sense, Baker and Bergoch make documentaries. Instead of documenting a human endeavor and then editing disparate shots into coherence, however, they record and absorb the life and conjure up very realistic dramatizations of its issues.
"Tangerine" (2015), their breakthrough film, was astounding not only for its immersion in the life of trans women hooking Hollywood, replete with wild drug and physical abuse, but the immense sympathy they retained for all their characters, including the Armenian taxi-driver john, played by Baker-regular Karren Karagulian (see cineSOURCE's in-depth interview, Team Tangerine Interview Each Other).
Kitana “Kiki” Rodriguez, one of that film's trans stars and part of that interview, thoroughly enjoyed the process. Already a fan of their work, which she came upon at the Hollywood public library, Kiki was overjoyed to run into them, wandering around the drop-in centers of Hollywood, to tell them about the scene and help shape the story. Ultimately, she starred alongside her friend Mya Taylor as well as the excellent Hollywood actors James Ransone and Mickey O'Hagan and a number of other talented actors and lay folk.
'Tangerine''s writer/director/editor Sean Baker (rt), writer/producer Chris Bergoch (lft) and co-star and researcher Kitana Rodriquez. photo with iPhone: D. Blair
Although I've yet to view "The Florida Project," I fell in love with "Tangerine" at the 2015 San Francisco International Film Festival where, as soon as the lights went up, I leapt up and started praising Baker and Bergoch, who were in attendance, to the stars. Immediately obtaining their three earlier films, I found them almost uniformly spectacular, with realistic scripts, excellent acting and innovative production values.
The first, "Take Out" (2004), is almost entirely in Chinese and concerns a Chinese food delivery boy bicycling through Manhattan trying to raise money to pay his now-due debt to some Chinese gangsters.
Amazingly gentle, since they never go for sex, gun play or psychosis to spice up a story (the gangsters deliver a single blow to the take-out boy's back with a ball peen hammer), their films expose the soul, and hinge on the catastrophe of its complexity, a rarity in contemporary cinema.
Ironically "Tangerine" was also hailed by the critics and became the talk of some towns as "the iPhone" movie. Sadly, it was not actually seen by that many and grossed less than a million theatrically, leaving Baker and Bergoch barely able to cover rent at their tiny Hollywood pads, they told me, when I interviewed them there in August, 2015.
Even "Starlet", which seemed like a winning formula—it is about a porn star, who is played by Dree Hemingway, the daughter of actress Mariel Hemingway, and did include a sex scene, albeit with little full frontal and a this-is-just-work perspective—didn't really fly, probably due to the too-life-like scenes of Dree's character yard-saling around the San Fernando Valley with her chihuahua, Starlet, or befriending an elderly shut in.
But they've evidently found the golden mean between commercial and crazy with "The Florida Project", just the right mixture of innocent kids, adventure and transgression. We can only imagine what fascinating realms Baker, Bergoch and team will tackle next now that they've finally been green-lit for adequate funding.
Doniphan Blair is a writer, film magazine publisher, designer and filmmaker ('Our Holocaust Vacation'), who can be reached . Posted on May 31, 2017 - 02:10 AM