GoMovieReviews Rating: ★★★★
Rated: TBC
Director: Gints Zilbalodis
Scenario: Gints Zilbalodis, Matīss Kaža
Production: Dream Well Studio (Latvia), Sacrebleu Productions (France), Take Five (Belgium)
Script Adaptation: Ron Dyens
Producers: Matīss Kaža, Gints Zilbalodis, Ron Dyens, Gregory Zalcman
Composers: Gints Zilbalodis, Rihards Zaļupe
Sound Design: Gurwal Coïc-Gallas
Director of Animation: Léo Silly-Pélissier.
A cat, Flow, sees itself in a reflection of a puddle.
Rain falls.
Dogs are running and barking.
Deer stampede.
Flow darts towards a meadow filled with lifting butterflies. The light is golden as Flow wanders through cat statues leading to a cabin.
Flow makes her way through a broken window to then stretch and sleep as the rain continues to fall.
A flood rises, catching animals in the waters’ wake.
Flow meows as the flood waters threaten to rise above the cabin.
Then a sailboat comes by, shepherded by a capybara, heralding safety.
Flow jumps aboard.
The first thing I noticed about this gentle yet powerfully moving animation was the realistic clear water.
So clear and clean and a feature through-out the film with the rain, the puddles, the flooded forest, to the huge waves of an ocean.
The imagery of the animation is like a moving painting of watercolours yet defined and flowing.
It’s an animation set in a forest, where Flow and the capybara find other animals that need saving, each species carefully studied so the mannerisms of each animal are delightfully accurate, provoking an added smile of enjoyment.
The cat, Flow, is seen stretching and scratching, demure, scared, the pupil of the eyes depicting the mood to a soundtrack of meows that call for help or growl in distaste.
All the animal sounds in the film are real. And there’s no dialogue. Just the emersion into the personalities of each animal aboard the small sailboat:
The yellow lab that follows Flow pees on one of the cat statues.
The Lema collects.
The bird navigates.
Each species is different and wary of the other, yet there’s also a kindness that evolves, started by the rescuing capybara who remains steady and friendly to all in the boat.
A thoughtfulness rises with the flooding waters that sees a bird acting against its nature to give a cat a fish.
The film is sweet and funny and magical to watch like a circling perspective around a giant cat statue as Flow sits on top.
The view ducks underwater to see colourful fish and a friendly whale that follows the unlikely group.
And the soundtrack is the animal sounds that communicate the question of, Friend or foe? Accented with an orchestral build, a crescendo for those poignant moments that enhance, not overtake, the gentle story about these animals who come together and grow to help each other while continuing to be who they are.
A genuine pleasure to watch.
