Being a pet owner, depending on your personality, comes with a fair level of anxiety. For example: after leaving my apartment to go see the film I’m writing about, the thought crossed my mind that maybe I hadn’t shut my bathroom door. If so, my two beautiful senior cats could potentially get inside and consume flowers toxic to them. For some people this is just the anxiety they have regarding, I don’t know, leaving the oven on whenever they head out in public, but for a certain kind of animal-loving softie, intrusive thoughts will be bound to hover.
After reassuring my anxiety about whether my cats got into the bathroom, it transferred to the pixelated critter at the center of Flow. A unnamed black shorthair introduced glancing at his own reflection in a pool of water, the outdoor cat seems to live in a forest home vacated by humans, though with remnants of large cat statues (I don’t blame people for worshiping felines to that degree) indicating some kind of mysterious society. Suddenly a tsunami consumes the cat’s home, leaving them to confront every kitty’s worst nightmare: water, and lots of it.
Any cat owner who saw this year’s A Quiet Place: Day One may recall the stress induced by the image of a cat bobbing underwater and often think of that as our feline hero escapes one sticky situation after another. They’re not alone, though, interacting with an adorable band of animals that include a capybara, golden retriever, lemur, and limp-winged tall bird. The cute buddies all “speak” through meows, barks, squeaks, and grunts, making Flow essentially enough of an “art film” to get festival play, even if it’s pretty simple at heart––while ostensibly a cutesy animated movie for children, I never felt my intelligence insulted. I don’t know if a limited release provided by North American distributors Janus and Sideshow means Flow finds a young audience beyond cultured adults taking their kids, but the film, at heart, recalls some of classic Disney.
In more adult terms, Flow suggests an animated iteration of a mid-2010s Emmanuel Lubezki-shot technical-showcase survival movie (e.g. Gravity and The Revenant), or––if you need another shorthand––something its detractors will basically argue to be a glorified video game à la 2022’s Stray. As a virtuoso experiment, the freedom provided by animation maybe lets the camera “flow” a little too much. The film’s choice to integrate rather pretty 3D animation with more cartoonish designs produces mixed results for pure aesthetic pleasure, and in a brief 84-minute runtime it still manages to be a little repetitive. (I encourage you to take a shot every time the cat manages to fall off the boat.) But if able to recognize the canny bit of emotional manipulation, all the same I must appreciate it still getting me through every nerve-wracking setpiece with a deep level of investment.
Flow screened at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival and will be released by Janus Films/Sideshow.
The post TIFF Review: Flow Suggests Classic Disney By Way of Emmanuel Lubezki first appeared on The Film Stage.
