An adorable black cat with luminous amber eyes fends off alone in “Flow”, snatching a fish from a pack of distracted stray dogs and running off with his loot while the dogs chase him just seconds behind. Visionary entertainer Gints Zilbalodis‘ The virtual camera darts after the cat, revealing a crisp computer-generated world where humans are strangely absent, but their influence can be keenly felt.
Perhaps that explains what happens next, when an almost biblical flood of water (which may well be the result of man-made climate change, although Zilbalodis never specifies this) brings a stampeding herd of wild animals in their direction. The cat’s ears flatten and it crouches to the ground, much like “The Lion King” did in that movie’s iconic wildebeest scene, as a giant wave comes thundering after the deer. Seconds later, the forest is underwater and the cat is desperately trying to stay afloat. (The deer seems to have disappeared completely, as often happens in a film that remains tenaciously committed to its titular cat.)
This stunning close-up lasts over four minutes and simply wouldn’t be possible in live action for as many reasons as a whiskered cat. Even with the use of drones, the cameras cannot move as nimbly through space as Zilbalodis conveys, achieving an instant kinship between the audience and their feline protagonist. But there is also the obvious fact that no filmmaker could train animal actors to do what Zilbalodis’s imagination demands, as suggested by that apocryphal story of several kittens being thrown off a cliff to film the movie in “The Adventures of Milo and “Otis.”
In virtually every respect, “Flow” could only be animated. And only Zilbalodis, the one-man world-builder responsible for the 2017 indie marvel “Away,” could animate it as hinotically as this one. At the premiere of his new film in Cannes, the young Lithuanian auteur explained how, after dedicating three and a half years alone to the making of “Away,” “Flow” represents the solidarity of a team, a notion that becomes more and more clear. since the cat’s survival depends on the other species it encounters throughout its captivating journey.
Gradually, the ensemble expands to include graceful knick-knacks-hoarding storks and lemurs, a Lovecraftian-looking whale, and a random groundhog, each of which comes to the cat’s aid at different points in his travels. The animals don’t talk in “Flow,” but they don’t behave like animals either, like when they take over an abandoned sailboat. Still, his silence marks a crucial difference between this project and the relatively anthropomorphic tradition of American cartoons, even if Zilbalodis intends for us to read a human allegory into what his cast experiences for 86 epic minutes.
The dogs are the first animals to break character, piling into a rowboat as the water rises and beckoning the cat to come aboard. Whereas just before they had been chasing the black cat, the herd now seems to recognize the larger crisis and extend a helping paw, although one of the film’s challenges is how to read the motivations of animals limited to a narrow range of expressions. Consider this: the film is about a cautious creature who learns to trust others. “Flow” is something of an anomaly in that it places more importance on a rich, impeccably lit landscape than on character animation.
That’s consistent with Zilbalodis’ style (“Away” featured only one person, who never spoke and was barely moved), and yet, given that he has a team of collaborators this time, it’s reasonable to expect that the performances of the animals are more nuanced. Instead, the film feels a bit like a high-resolution video game (Myst comes to mind) or a very fancy screensaver, where the creatures appear suspended in all those dazzling environments, with little sense of weight or gravity. If anything, all those long, floating plan-sequences make everything seem a little more artificial. That may not bother young viewers, but it challenges the physical principles of CGI.
Although “Flow” appears pleasing to the eye, it is not expressionistic enough in style to forgive these technical shortcomings. You know that feeling when you revisit a computer-animated cartoon that blew you away at the time (say, an early “Shrek” installment or the now-prehistoric “Ice Age”) and realize that, A few years later, technology doesn’t Can’t you stand it? The problem with “Flow” is that it already seems dated: commendable to be sure, but rudimentary at the same time. It’s like Zilbalodis decided to dump ocean water into Uncanny Valley.
Still, animal-loving viewers will form an almost instant bond with the cat and his motley companions. From Jiji, the feline sidekick in “Kiki’s Delivery Service,” to Bob, who stole the show in Skydance’s “Luck,” the unsung star of this film has some tough competition from other animated black cats. But it’s hard to resist those golden eyes, or the way “Flow” incorporates all kinds of endearingly feline behavior, from knocking objects off shelves to hitting the lemur’s dangling tail.
That damn cat may have started out as a loner, but by the end, this little group of creatures have saved each other enough times to be inseparable. “Flow” illustrates this beautifully through a group reflection that contrasts wonderfully with the opening shot of the cat looking down and seeing only itself in the water. Don’t run away the instant the credits roll, as there’s a satisfying glimpse into the fate of a hidden character at the end.