Sean Baker
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Little Fugitive (1953)
Directed by Morris Engel
influenced The Florida Project (2017)
Visuals Themes Plot
The Florida Project draws on the legacy of films such as Killer of Sheep (Charles Burnett, 1978), which offers a child’s-eye view of Watts, and Little Fugitive (Ray Ashley, Morris Engel, 1953), which does the same for Coney Island.
But what it really reminded me of was “Little Fugitive,” the great 1953 independent movie, about a boy let loose in Brooklyn’s Coney Island, that influenced the French New Wave, or François Truffaut’s “Small Change,” in which childhood is comprehended, without sticky sentimentality, as an enraptured time of life.
The Florida Project’s more whimsical childhood setting is reminiscent of the “Little Rascals” of Our Gang , or the seminal work of early-’50s naturalism Little Fugitive , which followed a working-class runaway navigating the chaos of Coney Island.
Working within a formula established by the 1953 masterpiece “Little Fugitive,” in which a young child roams Coney Island on his own, Baker uses his measured neorealist style to turns the grimy setting into a sun-soaked wonderland in which the children relate to their surroundings as an ongoing game.
The Little Rascals (1994)
Directed by Penelope Spheeris
influenced The Florida Project (2017)
Visuals Themes
But Baker, blending The Little Rascals with his own brand of indie neo-realism, cuts a direct path to the heart.
Baker pays tribute in the end credits to “The Little Rascals” shorts from the 1920s and ’30s, and I suppose one could mistake “The Florida Project” for a transcendent episode from that series.
Baker pulls it off by drawing on an unlikely inspiration: The Little Rascals.
Of course, Sean Baker ("Tangerine") was crediting the creators of the classic "Our Gang" comedies (better known to most of us as "The Little Rascals") and with good reason.
Sean Baker had hoped to make The Florida Project as the modern rejoinder to Hal Roach’s The Little Rascals, a series of early 20th century short films depicting the adventures of a dastardly group of ragtag young children.
“The Florida Project” has many antecedents: Francois Truffaut’s “The 400 Blows,” for one, and literary exposes of poverty like Betty Smith’s “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn,” but also classics of comic kid anarchy like “The Little Rascals” series, Jean Vigo’s “Zero for Conduct,” and Louis Malle’s “Zazie dans la Metro.”
But what it really reminded me of was “Little Fugitive,” the great 1953 independent movie, about a boy let loose in Brooklyn’s Coney Island, that influenced the French New Wave, or François Truffaut’s “Small Change,” in which childhood is comprehended, without sticky sentimentality, as an enraptured time of life.
There’s a dash of Truffaut’s “400 Blows” and “Small Change” in the movie’s recipe, along with the “Our Gang” vibe.
Pretty Woman (1990)
Directed by Garry Marshall
influenced Anora (2024), Tangerine (2015)
Plot Themes
What starts out as a modern, realistic version of Pretty Woman (1990), especially compared to something like Ken Russell’s ‘response’ to this narrative, 1991’s Whore, cascades into a manic take on the myth of Psyche and Eros.
Baker's drama is a modern take on Gary Marshall's Pretty Woman, except with more madness, sex appeal, and hilarity than you could ever imagine.
Through a lot of these early scenes, Anora plays like a more honest, more explicit version of Garry Marshall’s iconic ’90s rom-com Pretty Woman. They share most of the same main characters and plot beats: The wealthy out-of-town john, the broke sex worker, the chance encounter, the initial date, the offer of thousands of dollars for one week of companionship — potentially life-changing money for women like Ani or Julia Roberts’ Vivian in Pretty Woman.
What happens in 'Anora'?On the surface, “Anora” is a modern day take on 1990's “Pretty Woman.”
Comparisons to Pretty Woman are inevitable, but there is some truth to it because, like that film, the film functions as a pleasing romance between two people from very different backgrounds, who initially come together (ahem) for a purely transactional relationship until it inevitably becomes something more.
There’s been a lot of great films that have captured the heart, the humor, the horror and the Hollywood of living in Los Angeles: Sunset Boulevard, L.A. Story, Robert Altman’s Short Cuts and The Player, Pretty Woman, the Beverly Hills Cop trilogy, Reservoir Dogs, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, The Big Lebowski, Double Indemnity, Clueless, Heat, The Graduate, Chinatown, Welcome to L.A., L.A. Confidential, The Artist — the list goes on and is quite long.
It would be easy to criticize Honey Boy for following in the same footsteps as other tragic childhood stories like The Florida Project or Mommie Dearest , or other festival darlings like I, Tonya and Precious .
Noah Jupe ( Wonder, A Quiet Place, the upcoming Ford v Ferrari ) is quite a find as he manages to deal with some rather mature situations that faced LaBeouf as a kid living with his irresponsible, violence-prone father in a sleazy motel that at times recalls moments from The Florida Project .
As personal a project as Honey Boy may be — and as powerfully felt as it often is — the movie sometimes has the whiff of an artful rehashing of themes and characters familiar from various recent problematic-parent films like We the Animals , The Florida Project and I, Tonya (and, before those, Precious , Affliction , The Great Santini , camp classic Mommie Dearest and so many others).
But then there’s moments away from James, where young Otis gets to be a boy discovering the wonders of even this squalid world of these busted down apartments (think The Florida Project).
But as directed by Alma Har’el, whose music video background is easy to detect, “Honey Boy” is visually lyrical, moving to its own pace and melody and similar to 2017’s “The Florida Project” in how it grants beauty to the dingy, impoverished outskirts of glamorous landmarks.
Otis and James live in a The Florida Project-esque motel in rather unseemly conditions.
This mismatched crew embarks on a long car ride through the streets of New York City, giving Baker an opportunity to reference other cinematic tours through the gritty, '70s-era NYC of The French Connection (1971) and The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974), with the nod to '70s cinema further underscored by his choice of 35mm film and use of vintage camera filters.
In this sense, Ani recalls the protagonist of Stanley Kubrick's Barry Lyndon (played by the historically criticized Ryan O'Neal), who has often been seen as a conduit for the audience's projections. Madison embodies Ani with a certain neutrality in some of the later scenes, reacting to the bizarre events around her with a combination of bemusement and resigned acceptance. However, this is also juxtaposed with some moments of anger and outrage at the situations she finds herself in.
In some ways, The Florida Project reminded me of Fish Tank .
Influences here range from Ken Loach’s 1969 gem Kes, Carroll Ballard’s 1979 classic The Black Stallion, François Truffaut’s timeless 1959 stunner The 400 Blows, John Boorman’s graceful 1987 drama Hope and Glory and Andrea Arnold’s 2009 marvel Fish Tank.
A mix of “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn” and “Fish Tank,” Baker (who wrote the film with Chris Bergoch) brilliantly presents both sides of Moonee’s world, the real and the imaginative, held together by a whisper-thin membrane of childhood wonder.
While the performances of Prince and Vinaite are raw (the latter reminded me of Katie Jarvis from Fish Tank in its ferocity), it's Dafoe who is the balancing influence.
Killer of Sheep (1978)
Directed by Charles Burnett
influenced The Florida Project (2017)
Visuals Themes
The Florida Project draws on the legacy of films such as Killer of Sheep (Charles Burnett, 1978), which offers a child’s-eye view of Watts, and Little Fugitive (Ray Ashley, Morris Engel, 1953), which does the same for Coney Island.
Baker also shifts to the longer, tougher days of the motel’s grownup occupants—a choice that spiritually aligns The Florida Project with a DIY classic of multigenerational focus, Charles Burnett’s Killer Of Sheep .
Beasts of the Southern Wild (2012)
Directed by Benh Zeitlin
influenced The Florida Project (2017)
Characters Visuals Themes
As Moonee, Prince has the sort of coming-out party that greeted Quvenzhane Wallis in “Beasts of the Southern Wild” and Jacob Tremblay in “Room.”
The focus here is still on marginalized people, but Baker and Bergoch have graduated to 35mm film, which perfectly suits the empty-candy-wrapper aesthetics of the place, and also recalls the dreamlike weirdness of Beasts of the Southern Wild—minus soundtrack music, except for one of the most riveting finishes you’ll encounter this or any other year.
There are exceptions to the rule, such as Andrea Arnold’s American Honey, Lee Daniels’s Precious, Debra Granik’s Winter’s Bone, and Benh Zeitlin’s Beasts of the Southern Wild.
Like Quvenzhane Wallis in Beasts of the Southern Wild she has much to teach us about the disappointments of poverty and the character qualities necessary for survival.
While the impulse is admirable, it results in a film that veers dangerously close to the kind of aestheticized poverty porn that bedeviled such similar enterprises as “Beasts of the Southern Wild” and “American Honey.”
Bicycle Thieves (1948)
Directed by Vittorio De Sica
influenced The Florida Project (2017)
Themes Visuals
Nothing says "unforced realism" more than a narratively shapeless slice-of-life snapshot of impoverished kids wandering around in beatific innocence of their own suffering; all the way back to 1946's Shoeshine and 1948's Bicycle Thieves , child non-actors floating in front of the camera, guileless in their moral comfort, have been a mainstay of the form.
This kind of social realist, vérité-style filmmaking has been part of cinema almost from its beginning, reaching peaks in Italian neorealism (1948’s Bicycle Thieves ) and the French New Wave (1959’s The 400 Blows ).
Imagine a Sunshine State riff on “Los Olvidados” or “Bicycle Thieves,” slathered in sherbet hues and sprinkled with Pop Rocks, and you’ll get some sense of the strange, sun-scorched beauty of Baker’s accomplishment.
While the production comes from the Duplass brothers' stable, there's a touch of Harmony Korine here, a dash of John Waters and an echo of the resourcefulness of Jonathan Caouette, who made his dizzying 2003 memoir, Tarnation, with a little over $200, using iMovie software.
Nothing says "unforced realism" more than a narratively shapeless slice-of-life snapshot of impoverished kids wandering around in beatific innocence of their own suffering; all the way back to 1946's Shoeshine and 1948's Bicycle Thieves , child non-actors floating in front of the camera, guileless in their moral comfort, have been a mainstay of the form.
What starts out as a modern, realistic version of Pretty Woman (1990), especially compared to something like Ken Russell’s ‘response’ to this narrative, 1991’s Whore, cascades into a manic take on the myth of Psyche and Eros.
The 400 Blows (1959)
Directed by François Truffaut
influenced The Florida Project (2017)
Themes Visuals
Influences here range from Ken Loach’s 1969 gem Kes, Carroll Ballard’s 1979 classic The Black Stallion, François Truffaut’s timeless 1959 stunner The 400 Blows, John Boorman’s graceful 1987 drama Hope and Glory and Andrea Arnold’s 2009 marvel Fish Tank.
Have they escaped the cellular confines of “The 400 Blows” or “Salaam Bombay”?
This kind of social realist, vérité-style filmmaking has been part of cinema almost from its beginning, reaching peaks in Italian neorealism (1948’s Bicycle Thieves ) and the French New Wave (1959’s The 400 Blows ).
Her wonderful performance helps The Florida Project – despite the lack of much narrative structure – sit proudly beside such great studies of childhood as The 400 Blows, Fanny and Alexander and Boyhood .
“The Florida Project” has many antecedents: Francois Truffaut’s “The 400 Blows,” for one, and literary exposes of poverty like Betty Smith’s “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn,” but also classics of comic kid anarchy like “The Little Rascals” series, Jean Vigo’s “Zero for Conduct,” and Louis Malle’s “Zazie dans la Metro.”
“The Florida Project” joins classics such as Francois Truffaut’s “The 400 Blows” in that rarefied space.
It calls to mind the raggedy energy of the 1980s New York independent film explosion, most notably Spike Lee’s debut “She’s Gotta Have It” in the way it showcases an underrepresented minority in a no-big-deal fashion, with a good amount of raunchy humor instead of any special pleading or self-importance on the filmmaker’s behalf.
If it were possible to time-warp "Tangerine" back a few decades, it could be part of that wave of indies that redefined American cinema in the eighties and nineties, with features like " Go Fish ," "The Living End," "Clerks," "The Brother from Another Planet" and "She's Gotta Have It"— works that, acting- and storytelling-wise, were rough around the edges, but compensated by depicting worlds rarely seen onscreen, with warmth and confidence.
Ivan, whose adorable way of speaking English is hilariously reminiscent of Anton Yelchin‘s Chekov in Star Trek (2009), is clear as to what exactly he wants from Ani.
The only time the film really stops moving is during Alex’s nightclub performance of the signature song from Walt Disney’s 1961 live-action musical Babes in Toyland—a potentially mawkish, extreme close-up set-piece (in the mold of Carey Mulligan in Shame) leavened by Sin-Dee’s half-rapt, half-impatient viewing from a corner booth.
Baker’s combination of acute emotional intelligence and raucous, often bawdy humor sometimes brings to mind Fatih Akin, a German filmmaker of Turkish descent who also likes to set his films ( Head-On , The Edge of Heaven , Soul Kitchen ) in tough urban areas where conflicting cultural value systems meet and clash.
Part douchebag boyfriend and part Jack Lemmon in Glengarry Glen Ross , Rex has a persistence only matched by the dickishness written for him.