A black cat wanders through a forest when it sees its next prey: a wriggling fish in the river, just out of reach. But before Cat can pounce, a pack of dogs rushes in, plucking the fish out of the water. But what luck! The dogs fight over it, giving this feline the chance to snatch the fish and run off — fleeing before the dogs notice their meal is no longer there. Cat and dogs give chase, but this normal scene in the wilderness is interrupted by the abnormal: a stampede of fleeing deer, followed by a towering wave of water so huge it blots out the sky. Soon, Cat is caught in the tidal wave, which quickly covers the entire world in an endless flood.
Flow, an animated adventure film directed by Gints Zilbalodis and written by Zilbalodis and Matīss Kaža, is Latvia’s entry for the Best International Film Oscar — and it’s easy to see why. A narratively minimalist, visually splendid odyssey, Flow is an invigorating new innovation in 3D animation thanks to its unique hybrid of traditional CG animation and video game cinematics. The result is something like a painting come to life, a stunning tableau upon which Zilbalodis can draw his sweetly moving story of animals weathering a biblical apocalypse.
Flow’s story is a relatively straightforward one: Cat moves from one obstacle to the next trying to survive the flood. But despite being a solitary creature, it gains unlikely allies along the way: a hard-nosed capybara with a heart of gold, a greedy lemur that loves anything that shines, an aloof Secretarybird with a wounded wing, and a cheery yellow Labrador that has to work to earn Cat’s trust. The group of misfit survivors end up taking refuge on the same dingy boat, which they quickly learn how to steer through the turbulent waters.
The group undergoes many distressing close calls, each sequence relentlessly tense and efficiently constructed. Some are the kind of obstacles you expect like rocky waters that turn into a giant waterfall, a gang of rival lemurs that raid the boat of its supplies. Others are more unpredictable, like the empty ruins of human cities that the group solemnly navigate, or a strange Mayan-style temple that appears to exert some cosmic power over the Earth.
It would be easy to compare Flow to a Pixar or Disney film, but there's a lovely minimalism to the Latvian film that is miles away from the mile-a-minute dialogue and winking humor typical of U.S. animation. Instead, there's a undercurrent of curious melancholy to the film as the animals find themselves floating through an abandoned world, all the signs of humans having inhabited it long ago, but either abandoning it or perishing before the flood.
Cat, for example, had been living in a house that was seemingly recently inhabited; its bed still made, pencils and paper still lying strewn across the desk (many of them containing sketches of cats), dishes still on the table. But the outside has been taken over by overgrown plants and weeds, and the structure seems on the verge of collapse. You can imagine that Cat, stubbornly loyal to this empty house, was fruitlessly waiting for its human to come home.
It’s in these small, lovely details that Flow finds its magic. It’s a different vision of a post-apocalyptic landscape: an Earth empty of humans, but still teeming with life. All sorts of animals, exotic and common, fight to survive this great flood, many defying their natural instincts and banding together. It’s a wholesome arc, to watch Cat and a strange found family learn how to co-exist after knocking heads (often literally), before finally coming to embrace and protect each other. There’s something almost … human about it.
It all coalesces in a sweet, beautifully rendered eco-fable that proves that life can exist beyond the apocalypse, if only for the cutest, furriest of creatures. Its simple, endearing story, combined with its unique animation, makes Flow one of the most unique, refreshing apocalypse movies to be released this decade.
