Flow (2024) Review: A Stunningly, Dialogue-Free Animated Adventure
Let the Flow immerse you in its strangely beautiful post-apocalyptic world devoid of humans with only the wild and domestic animals roaming free. The movie opens in the forest with the black cat staring at his own reflection in a puddle of water before it gets surprised by an incoming pack of dogs. It’s worth noting that Latvian writer-director Gints Zilbalodis, whose only previous feature-length animated film was Away five years ago, made a bold creative choice not to show any dialogue at all. There are no talking animals. No sing-a-long moments and no human characters in sight. The sounds that you hear on the screen are the animals’ sounds and background noises. None of the animals are given a character’s name but that doesn’t mean they are devoid of personalities.
The black cat, which serves as the movie’s protagonist, is always vigilant as seen right from the beginning when it encounters a pack of dogs chasing the cat after it tries to take the fish. Zilbalodis, who co-wrote the screenplay with Matīss Kaža, is basically a survival story but one that is affecting as it’s hard not to root for the cat’s journey throughout its lean 85-minute running time. Trouble arises — both literally and figuratively — when a tsunami floods the forest, causing the cat to react fast and try its best to run for safety. While the cat manages to take shelter in an abandoned house, it isn’t long before the water level keeps rising, leaving it with no choice but to find ways to escape. From there, the cat subsequently finds itself jumping into a sailboat that has a somewhat laid-back capybara aboard.
As the journey continues, we gradually see more animals aboard the sailboat including the ever-curious lemur which is somehow fond of a basket full of junk, particularly a handheld mirror. Then, there’s the dominant white secretarybird, which looks as if it loves to intimidate the cat, leading to one of the best scenes as Zilbalodis’ fluid camerawork captures the thrilling moment of the cat almost finds itself sinking underwater before being grabbed by the bird from the sky. The movie also features the yellow Labrador Retriever, a playful dog which seemingly eager to develop a friendship with the cat.
Now, even with its dialogue-free approach, Zilbalodis does a great job establishing the otherwise mismatched relationship between these unlikely animals joining together on a sailboat. He uses these respective animals’ body languages and varied tones of their sounds to form a communication between each other, which in turn, helps to build a genuine chemistry like how we would see a group of human strangers get together in a time of crisis or natural disaster. Interestingly, Zilbalodis even goes as far as recording the sound of real animals to preserve its level of authenticity except for the capybara’s sounds coming from a baby camel.
He also keeps the story simple with his minimalist narrative approach while infusing relatable themes of climate change, trust, friendship and above all, a sense of community without resorting to heavy-handed metaphors. He eschews flashbacks of why the world of Flow lacks human presence and how the tsunami happens because he wants us to focus on what matters the most: the cat’s survival along with the rest of the animals throughout their unpredictable journey.
Another thing worth mentioning is Zilbalodis’ unique visual style that looks like a cross of 3D animation and video-game cutscenes and amazingly, he and his team did it using the free and open-source 3D software called Blender. No doubt the animation, particularly the background from the lush forest to the massive flood has a distinctly lived-in visual texture while the animal characters are reminiscent of the earlier PlayStation era.
Extra credits also go to Zilbalodis’ epic and often lively camerawork while Flow has everything a great animated feature should be: a stunningly rendered animation filled with enough humour, heart and stakes. Flow is selected to represent Latvia in the Oscars’ Best International Feature Film category and here’s hoping this movie manages to make it to the shortlist.
