Review of Flow (d. Gints Zilbalodis, 2024)
It’s difficult to pinpoint where exactly the the new animated film Flow takes place. We’re provided no title cards to help situate us, and if you’re hoping a character might tell us, you’re out of luck. The film is dialogue-free, though it’s far from silent: instead, we are treated to a medley of meows, barks, screeches and grunts, all emanating from the odd bunch of critters that we follow throughout the film, with nary a human in sight. Lest you think we’re here to survey the diversity of any particular ecosystem, you’ll also be flummoxed: in a verdant rainforest, we see capybaras, ring-tailed lemurs, secretary birds, and labrador retrievers all eking out a tense coexistence, to say nothing of our de facto protagonist, a charcoal-grey house cat with moonbeam eyes. I’m no zoologist, but that would seem to places us somewhere between the Amazon, Madagascar, and southern Africa, a veritable Elsewhere designed for minimal scrutiny and maximal wonder where distinctions between the exotic and familiar have long since collapsed. The storytelling is much the same: director Gints Zilbalodis, who also wrote the film alongside MatÄ«ss Kaža, seems to draw on everything from Judeo-Christian myth(s) to Aesop’s fables to science fiction, with no one reference point emerging any more clarifying than another. For those attuned to Zilbalodis’s pointillistic approach, not to mention cat owners, this will all likely register as expansive and lyrical. For more naggingly discerning viewers, dog owners possibly among them, they’re more likely to find it too vague by half. And there’s the rub: Flow’s mysteries enchant as often as they obfuscate.
Another one of those mysteries: where is everybody? After a thrillingly close brush with a pack of dogs, we follow the feline (i.e., “The Cat”) back to its lair. It comes as something of a shock to find not a den but a log cabin with a gable roof, which The Cat enters through a shattered window before curling up on a perfectly-made bed. The cabin is also festooned with facsimiles made in The Cat’s likeness, including sketches and wood carvings resting on a bedside table, and several statues which dot the surrounding glade, including one that towers over the forest canopy. Clearly, this is human handiwork, as is much of the detritus that we see fauna interacting with in surprising ways throughout the film (one must suspend any disbelief in a capybara’s capacity to navigate a sailboat through troubled waters, for instance). We even see the ruins of an ancient city—another stylistic hodgepodge of Greco-Roman detailing and Venetian canals—now overgrown with vegetation and devoid of life. So what happened? In Zilbalodis’s most haunting evasion, we never learn of their fate, adding both another genre and a layer of subversion to his melting pot: it’s a post-apocalyptic fable in which we never see or learn of the apocalypse. Or at least that apocalypse: Flow’s inciting incident is a flood ripped straight from Genesis that turns its jungle into a riparian maze, one made navigable only by those creatures that learn to push past their innate wariness and work together. In this way, I suppose the film is also an eco-parable of the costs of man-made climate change as well as a thinly-veiled political allegory about the importance of collective action. Any time you try to pin the film down, it slips through your fingers.
The only recourse may be to take heed of the film’s title and treat it as a directive: just go with the Flow. Rather than a surrender to illogic, this opens one up to the many pleasures of Zilbalodis’s vision. Some of these are cuddly—the Cat makes for an inquisitive and undeniably adorable lodestar—in a way clearly designed to appeal to children, the presumed audience for this type of fare. Yet most notable is how much of these are decidedly not. The pace is so languid it will surely shake off a sizable chunk of the 12-and-under-crowd; think of a hangout movie set in the animal kingdom and you’re not far off. The compositions—crafted using the free and open-source animation software Blender—may have the look of videogame cutscenes but convey both a genuine sense of scale and an earned sense of awe more indebted to David Lean than Electronic Arts. Further still, Zilbalodis isn’t afraid to let darkness lick at his mysteries’ heels. As arbitrarily as they rose, the flood waters eventually recede back to their prior levels, with our band of castoffs now forming a most unlikely family, their hard-won bonds likely helping them see through whatever crisis comes next. But that note of uplift is not where we end. Instead, the group find a whale, the most majestic beneficiary of the flood, now beached in the middle of the forest. Some creatures’ triumph is another’s calamity, and in the end, there really might be only two kinds of animals in this jungle: the quick and the dead.
In a world increasingly prone to catastrophe, any one of us could turn up at the wrong end of that equation, and at any time. Camaraderie, then, is not just a tonic but a survival strategy, one not just cats and dogs need consider. That’s a sentiment simultaneously banal and evergreen, which is perhaps the best description of Flow’s peculiar charm. Whenever you feel the film losing its balance atop this tightrope, Zilbalodis’ reverence for the ineffable sees it through. Perhaps that’s the very definition of faith; in one transfixing sequence, one feathered member of the group levitates to the heavens, shrouded in golden light and never to be seen again after proving its mettle. In a world without people—one that’s likely moved beyond them, maybe even as its own survival strategy—will such deliverance fall upon deaf ears? No, Zilbalodis answers, as The Cat watches its ally disappear with a mixture of in-the-moment bewilderment and bone-deep understanding. In moments like this, Zilbalodis’s belief in worlds beyond words speaks loud and clear.
Reviewed 3/07/2025