Latvia, France, Belgium, 2024
Directed by Gints Zilbalodis
(Animated movie)
Quietly sitting in the lush grass, a young black cat stares in the river – is it wondering if the image is his, or is it reckoning to catch a fish, or is it engrossed by the flow, unless it is the sparkle and the reflections?
The establishing shot of “Flow” is mirrored in part by the last one, but this time the young black cat is not alone, there are three others animals quietly sitting in the lush grass and why they stare so intently in the water is even more hard to guess, after the many events they experienced together in the previous eighty minutes or so – is it possible memories flow back or is it simply they enjoy the flow?
The contrast sums up the simple tale: this is about a lonely cat becoming part of, in a way the center too, of a small gang of animals, the birth and growth of a genuine if motley gang of pals. But the context allowing this charming development has been dire. Out of the blue, without any ominous sign suggesting it could happen in this tranquil and sunny world, devastating floods submerge it. The rising level of water first stuns the cat, then panics him, and eventually it ends up cornered on the top of a high rock, seemingly doomed.
But a boat looms on the horizon. The cat dares to swim and manages to climb onboard – only to find out it is not alone, as a capybara is already there. The slightly timorous cat learns to get along this bigger, not at all nasty but rather drowsy, companion. This is a welcome and useful development as other animals soon jump in the boat. It is thus a motley crew that strives to navigate and survive the endless surface of water the world seems to have become. To their dismay it is not only a dull place with little food, it is also unsafe as storms gather up and threaten to drown the animals, when it is not their own foolishness and awkwardness that put their life at risk.
The cat is more than once on the verge of getting badly hurt, even tragically killed, during this hectic sea journey – though it proves a more than skilled swimmer, even a diver, which is a bit of a stretch by the way, when it is not rescued in the nick of the time by other animals, like a whale or a heron. But if the whale acts unwittingly, the heron does it on purpose: the bird intents to strike up what is an odd friendship ignoring barriers between-species friendship, baffling the cat and angering the flock the heron belongs to, which eventually leads to the heron’s exclusion and mutilation. The bond between the cat and the heron arguably stands out as the strongest the feline forges in its adventures, till death parts them in a the most magical and moving scene of the film. But in addition to the capybara the pals also get along with a grumpy lemur eager to hoard as many sparkling objects as it could and a kind of Labrador dog which used to be part of a pack of four chasing the cat but which turns out to be a kind dog only looking for a companion to play with. The Labrador’s canine friends would belatedly join the boat but the world changes again: the water recedes as suddenly and with as much chaos and destruction as it rose. The world gets back in shape.
It is in this changed environment that “Flow”’s final part unfolds, centering on the young black cat’s effort to get reunited with his traveling companions. It is no easy task and involves a cliffhanging rescue operation. Of course the heron would never feature back and some dogs would prove fickle companion, but still the cat is no longer lonely and life can flow more pleasantly.
It probably helps that no human is around to spoil the party. When the deluge hits the world, it seems that mankind has already vanished: the countryside house whose garden is filled with awesome statues of cats the cat likes to use as a shelter has been clearly abandoned for some time, and perhaps in a rush. The great city whose buildings evoke the prestigious artistic past of Europe the cat and its friends cross is equally deserted and forlorn. Even when the disaster ends and the earth dries up, the crowds are only made up of lemurs or deer – the humans are still missing, as if they have always been a pointless natural addition to the wild and as if the natural world has never needed them to thrive in the first place.
As the boy of director Gints Zilbalodis’ debut feature “Away”, after his strange fight for survival and amazing land journey that made up most of the film, reaches its destination, still without any word uttered and not much of a psychological development in the offing, it feels just obvious to wonder how in a hypothetical sophomoric feature the brilliant Latvian artist would deal with genuine human characters and events. The question remains open, as Zilbalodis dodges narrating an ordinary tale. He rather decides to provide his own contribution to the arguably thin corpus of films and novels that, in the wake of Jack London’s “White Fang” try to paint animal lives and consciences in the less anthropomorphic terms possible.
Save for that gripping, too gripping, final rescue scene, the film avoids painting the animals with the same brush humans would be, rarely projecting our psychological traits and the narrative tropes they underpin on the animals. The inter-species relations, in particular, seem to be a matter of practical and wary observation, the animals looking at the others without displaying our customary emotional reactions that would then orient inevitably the story.
This vision would have been far more refreshing if the soundtrack had been different: the omnipresent music, composed by the director, tends to cue the audience’s reaction too conspicuously. The real trouble is that the film seems to riff and to expand on what “Away” delivered so boldly in 2019 – an exquisitely imaginative take on the uncanny, challenging perceptions and reinventing the reality (if in “Away” the depicted world looked really weird, the one where “Flow” takes place is deceptively familiar: actually, it is hard to gather what part of Earth is pictured as too many heterogeneous elements are blended or tweaked, like the heron which looks like a fanciful interpretation of species, or the lemurs, which are genuine but live usually in Madagascar, thus looking odd in ruins that evoke Venice or the Andes). Zilbalodis is no longer the only one working: he is part of a team and it shows. The film is technically even more impressive that the previous one and yet it does not feel more thrilling or magical. It is a beautiful film and it is centered on a highly relatable and touching cat, but it may be time for Zilbalodis to deal with more traditional narrative elements and to show what he can do with the human stuff.