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‘Flow’ Review: Latvian Animator Gints Zilbalodis Follows Mesmerizing ‘Away’ With an Endearing Cat’s Incredible Journey
Radically different from the look or feel of other toons, Gints Zilbalodis’ hypnotic 'Flow' follows a group of animals adapting to a waterlogged world.
But there’s also the obvious fact that no filmmaker could train animal actors to do what Zilbalodis’ imagination demands — as suggested by that apocryphal story of multiple kittens being dropped off a cliff to get the shot in “The Adventures of Milo and Otis.” And it could only be animated as hynotically as this by Zilbalodis, the one-man world-builder responsible for the 2017 indie marvel “Away.” At his new film’s Cannes premiere, the young Lithuanian auteur explained how, after dedicating a solitary three and a half years to the making of “Away,” “Flow” represents the supportive coming-together of a team — a notion that becomes increasingly clear as the cat’s survival depends on the other species it encounters along its captivating journey. Whereas they’d been chasing the black cat just before, the pack now seem to recognize the greater 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.
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