Red Rocket (2021)

Direction: Sean Baker
Country: USA

Sean Baker has been a blessing to contemporary cinema, coming up with enthralling films such as Tangerine (2015) and The Florida Project (2017). In his new project - the dramedy Red Rocket - he keeps the provocative combination of social realism and recreational fiction, delivering a transgressive satire about the American male ego, which gains a special force with the performance of Simon Rex (a regular in the Scary Movie franchise). He is Mikey Saber, a washed-up porn star and manipulative bragger who returns to his small Texas hometown after years spent in L.A.  

Homeless and penniless, he begs to his estranged wife, Lexi (Bree Elrod) and her cranky mother, Lil (Brenda Deiss), to stay with them, promising to help with the house chores and pay rent. To do so, and because the conservative local Texans don’t seem impressed with his CV and porn industry awards to hire him, he returns to the amateurish drug dealers with whom he worked in the past. Besides that, he starts hanging out with Lonnie (Ethan Darbone), a lonely neighbor, and lures a flirtatious 17-year-old girl, Raileigh (Suzanna Son), into one of his dirty schemes. 

In a tragicomic way, Baker manages to inject sarcasm (Trump’s unlawful America lurks dangerously), discomfort (regarding Mikey’s opportunistic and predatory instincts) and amusement (there are a lot of funny incidents bringing conflict and tension together), taking good advantage from the environment itself and the largely non-professional cast to make it even more real. The acting styles are well-matched with the uninhibited direction.

With a few stark shots and coherent vision, Red Rocket finds disenchantment and hilarity in America.

The Florida Project (2017)

Directed by Sean Baker
Country: USA

46-year-old American filmmaker Sean Baker seemed to have found his own voice through a mesmerizing cinema-verité that concurrently fascinates, disturbs, and ultimately infuriates.

If his masterwork “Tangerine”, entirely shot on iPhone 5s, was packed with a mix of punchy reality and funny momentum, his new drama, “The Florida Project”, captured on 35mm film, leaves the humor aside, effectively depicting human degradation and parental negligence with the same raw intensity.

The animated rhythm of 'Celebrate' by Earth, Wind & Fire, together with the sight of three little kids fooling around and upsetting the people of their neighborhood, passed the misleading idea that this could be a feel-good movie focused on childhood. Don’t even think about it! This film is about the immense suffering that some reckless and negligent parents can cause to their children.

With a deft command of the camera, Baker takes us to the light purple-colored Magic Castle motel in Kissimmee, Florida, where the lazy twenty-something Halley (Bria Vinaite) and her six-year-old daughter, Moonee (Brooklynn Prince), currently live. Halley not only doesn’t have a job, she doesn’t want to find one. She prefers to remain in her room, indolently smoking weed, while her kid is left unsupervised, frequently misbehaving with her friends Scooty (Christopher Rivera), Dicky (Aiden Malik), and Jancey (Valeria Cotto). 

She gets some food from her friend Ashley (Mela Murder), Scooty’s mother and upstairs neighbor, as a payment for watching for her son while she’s at work. Ashley would never imagine how vulgar, rancorous, and cunning her friend is, until they cut relations due to an incident involving the children.

Obviously, the weekly rent is a constant problem for Halley, who resorts to illegal schemes to get the money. Huckstering cheap perfumes to tourists, offering sexual services online, and stealing her clients whenever possible, are all part of her deal.

Despite fond of Halley and her kid, Bobby (Willem Defoe), the motel manager, is many times forced to impose his authority. But she's not his only problem since he has to deal with trafficking in some rooms, sneaky guys trying to maliciously approach the kids outside, and the stubborn Gloria (Sandy Kane), who loves sunbathing topless near the pool. Not to mention taking care of mattresses impregnated with bedbugs.

Extremely absorbing, mostly because of the strange acting rapport between Vinaite and the young Prince, “The Florida Project” mirrors the immaturity, irresponsibility, and rudeness of a lost person, whose terrible example for her child, both behavior and language-wise, is sad and vexatious.

The script was cleverly co-written by Baker and his habitual collaborator Chris Bergoch, while the briskness of the editing, credited to the filmmaker, felt a bit tiresome at times without compromising the effectiveness of the story or the essence of its message.