Curiosity Inc.

Wow. The weekend after Thanksgiving and the pickings are slim indeed. Methinks nobody wanted to get caught in the jetwash of Moana 2, Wicked, and Gladiator II. Between that and the aftermath of the AMPAS holdouts, little wonder we’re getting another year in which the awards season releases are getting pushed out to after Christmas and well into January.

Luckily, we’ve got some arthouse darlings quietly making waves while the mainstream releases are busy trying to eat each other. One example is Flow, the latest from Latvian animator Gints Zilbalodis. Don’t worry if foreign-language movies aren’t your thing — this one’s a no-language film. No talking, no writing, no subtitles, nada.

Our protagonist is a black cat. Literally, just an ordinary black housecat. The supporting players include a lunkheaded golden retriever who only wants to play, a ring-tailed lemur who obsessively hoards every trinket within reach, an altruistic secretarybird, and a practical capybara. They’re all stuck together in a boat, working together to survive while the sea levels continuously rise and flood the planet. That’s the whole movie.

On the one hand, I have to commend the filmmakers for their full-on commitment to the premise. These animals are painstakingly designed and animated to look and act like animals, distinctly non-human and yet easy for humans to relate with. Furthermore, it’s impressively refreshing to see a film with a “no spoken dialogue” gimmick that actually delivers without any measure of cheating. (Looking at you, Azrael.)

Unfortunately, the total absence of writing or speech means a defiant lack of world-building. Don’t even bother asking where this is supposed to take place, how and why the entire world could flood on a seasonal basis (raising the global sea level by a couple thousand feet within minutes, I might add), where the boat came from, or who made any of the statues and buildings we see all throughout the picture. None of that matters. This is a fable and it takes place in some fantasy world. Just go with it.

Unfortunately, that suspension of disbelief only goes so far. It gets to be a serious problem in those moments when we can’t know why the characters decide on plot-critical actions. Like why the secretarybird keeps going so far out of its way to help this strange black cat, for instance. To say nothing of the whale that comes and goes like a recurring deus ex machina. But my personal favorite example comes roughly 66 minutes in. I can’t even spoil what happens because I have no idea what the hell it was.

Unquestionably, the film is at its best when it’s at its simplest. We’ve got a cute little kitty who’s trying not to starve or drown. Great. We’ve got animals trying to overcome their baser natures and learn how to cooperate so they all survive. Fantastic.

Granted, that would be a lot more effective if The Wild Robot hadn’t done the exact same thing a couple months ago. And while that movie was unquestionably better, it also had so much more to work with. Considering how much less Flow had to work with, the result is damned impressive.

It’s perfectly clear that the animation is where the money and effort all went, because this movie is gob-smackingly gorgeous. The animation is smooth and expressive. The designs are bursting with style. Even in those moments when I couldn’t understand what was going on, I could appreciate how impossibly beautiful it all was.

(Incidentally, there’s close to two minutes of studio bumpers at the start of this picture. To let you know exactly how many people and how much money went into this animation.)

Ultimately, I put Flow in the same class as Azrael and Here: Movies that never really grow past their initial gimmicks, working better as a demo reel than a work of narrative storytelling. The animation is easily worth the ticket price and then some, but it’s not enough to distract from the arbitrary plot and the non-existent world-building. It’s frustrating, because these filmmakers are demonstrably talented enough that they could’ve gone farther and told a more coherent story if they had more screentime, if they were willing to bend their rules, or if they were willing to cut some of the more bewildering inclusions. (Seriously, what the high-flying hell happened to that secretarybird?!)

This one gets an easy home video recommendation.

For more Movie Curiosities, check out my blog. I’m also on Facebook and BlueSky.