Review: FLOW

A black cat ambles through a forest, avoiding a pack of dogs, and notices a rumbling coming from the earth. Animals speed through the scene, escaping what the cat sees is a huge, violent tide. Soon, the entire land is underwater and the cat is perched increasingly on the ear of a massive cat sculpture as a sailboat drifts its way. Scrambling aboard, it finds a capybara already there. The cat goes aft to the shelter to sleep after its exhausting progress. Eventually, they are joined by a ring tailed lemur and a stork, all of whom go through distrust and conflict until it really looks like it's them and the endless ocean. This is a story of survival.

The unavoidable eco theme of the climate disaster is clearly linked to the complete absence of the creatures that caused it, the humans. Their cities and monuments have become dry spaces for the animals. As we follow the crew of the sailboat we notice that they pick up skills along the way like the tiller of the boat, gathering treasures, the cat overcoming its antipathy to water and fishing for the rest of them. These are portrayed as being developmental but always within the limitations of physiology. Analogies to culture and politics are also clear, testifying to the adoption of a kind of compassion. That said, there is an incident in the stork flock that puts the exclusion and aggression to the fore.

But the animals don't just turn into cute human substitutes. The cat moves like a cat, coughs up hairballs and cleans itself like a real one. There is no spoken dialogue but the meaning of vocalisations (taken from real life animal sounds) is always clear. The animation style might take some folk a spell to adjust to. The backgrounds and settings lean toward photorealism but the animals are more blocky, like children's book illustrations. I think this was to allow more agility to the action of the characters in preference for a more dodgy ultra real style. Once you accept the animals, you will be lost in the story and will stop wondering about the method and start worrying if the cat is going to survive this time overboard.

And that's the thing. Flow does the lot, humour, drama, suspense and a stinging sadness when it needs to. If you leave this film not on the point of tears (or past it) you should worry. If it doesn't give you pause to consider the fragility of the state of the Earth then you might want to start considering. This is a short review because I know that, if I let myself, I might never stop writing about it. There were an expected high number of kids in the audience and I was almost looking forward to the sounds of their engagement. Then the film really kicked in, the powerful score and sound design lifting the already muscular visual feast, and the silence was the sound of awe. This will be one of the best films I will see this year.