A solitary cat, displaced by a great flood, finds refuge on a boat with various species and must navigate the challenges of adapting to a transformed world together.
05 Feb Flow (2024)
Flow of Worlds
As with many long form projects, you have the world and somewhat separately you have characters moving through that world. In the noir form we have here some innocent characters are selected, seemingly at random, to be tossed by world forces for our amusement.
Rarely is the world articulated well enough to carry the film by itself. The worlds of WALL-E and Star Wars do. Tintin and Indiana Jones do not because they simply reference what came before.
The world here is worthy. We have people much like us with pets, houses, cities, science, art, and magic. Something is happening with the planet; frequent, temporary floods. They have devised an escape that all people have used — a magical portal — that cannot take pets. When our story starts, the people are gone, pets remain, and we are in between floods.
The characters are a mix of domestic and wild creatures, and follow simple emotional metaphoric behaviour. One wild creature becomes human enough to pass over, a secretary bird who has guided an accidental sailboat to the magical peak. Very likely, this bird knows exactly where to go and why — teaching the other passengers how.
Our cat — the main noir focus — remains.
Back to the world, the floods are caused by earthquakes that in this case at least open chasms that almost immediately drain the flood.
This world is worthy of our attention. On my list of important films — fours — I have several animated projects and in respect they all have this world cleverness. Moana, Kubo, Red String,
Posted in 2025
Ted’s Evaluation — 3 of 3: Worth watching.
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