Film Review - Flow
Images courtesy of Madman Entertainment.
Fresh off its Best Animated Feature win at the Oscars, Flow finally arrives in Australian cinemas after an earlier stint at the Melbourne International Film Festival that truly wowed me. The film follows a shy and distrusting black cat with vibrant orange eyes, content to roam around the abandoned forest dwellings and animal statues of the post-human world in which it inhabits, until a cataclysmic flood strikes the forest. The cat soon finds refuge on a small wooden boat among some uneasy allies, such as a stoic yet kind capybara (1), an overly-excited dog, a greedy lemur, a secretary bird, and, occasionally, many others. The group drift around the floodwaters, which have claimed much of the land around them, besides certain tall structures and an ominously large cluster of stalactite-like peaks the group seem to be venturing toward. The longer they spend together, bonds form, friendships are made, divides between their animalistic animosities are challenged, and the group discover themselves fully through some truly cosmic experiences amidst a world where humans seem to have been mysteriously absent for years.
Flow’s narrative is told sans dialogue, narration, or on-screen text, and viewers are largely left to interpret the backstory and setting of the film for themselves. To this end, all of the animals in the film are ‘voiced’ by the actual animals that they are (2), and do not speak as in many other animated animal films. One exception is the capybara, who is in fact voiced by a baby camel, when the real-life high pitched squeal sounds recorded from real capybaras didn’t suit the characterisation of the character (3). Even sound designer Gurwal Coïc-Gallas’s “own cat “went silent” for about two months as soon as a microphone started appearing around the house”(4), in truly characteristic feline fashion. The result, in conjunction with the lively and vibrant animation, is a colourful cast of animals who all embody the spiritual traits of their respective animal. Flow’s incredible sound design is not limited to the animal sounds—director, composer and animator Zilbalodis, Coïc-Gallas and composer Rihards Zaļupe all work together to mount this ambitious soundscape of nuanced cinematic music that embodies the trials and tribulations the animals encounter amidst the absurd spectacle of the flood and the world it has claimed. There is a foreboding musical motif throughout the film associated with the cat’s fear of the flood that works to communicate the cat’s own fear of the broadly dangerous world around it, and I get goosebumps whenever I think about it.
Flow’s animation style is fascinating to note, visually resembling a cel-shaded indie video game. Textures and lighting have a deliberate artificiality to them that calls to attention to nuances of polygon modelling often seen in such games. This is primarily a product of Flow’s independent production methods, which “was made entirely with Blender”, with the final render being done on Zilbalodis’s own PC (5), but there’s undeniably a deliberate attention to this in the final product. Flow’s camera work highlights this, making use of a free-moving camera that knows when to be frantic and when to be sweeping and majestic, appearing at times like a video game cutscene and emotionally channeling the feeling of exploring an open world. I personally think this approach is downright wonderful, and something I don’t think I’ve ever seen from a feature film with as much buzz as Flow. In an era where animation studio shake-ups from films like Spider-Verse seem to usher in new imitative style guides, it’s great that films like Flow gaining mainstream attention ensure that audiences realise the utter versatility and diversity possible for filmic animation styles.
A major part of Flow’s effective use of its own video game-esque animation style is that it works in effective symbiosis with its core themes of exploration and survival. The world of Flow is entirely absent of humans, leaving the domesticated cat and dog of the film to meander largely aimlessly, still governed by the day-to-day of their relationships with humans, but without the humans. The cat sleeps on a bed, and the dog hunts for small animals with a pack of other domesticated dog breeds. Humanity’s scattered buildings and monuments remain, and the animals utilise these to navigate and survive—when the animals all come together, it’s on a human-made boat. It’s both charming and ultimately pivotal to the narrative that human innovation keeps them going, but this is only an initial spark of self-preservation, as by the end of the film, human construction almost becomes a hindrance. The biblical washing away of humanity’s proof of existence makes way for the animals to truly claim the world as their own, akin to the feeling of open world exploration. It’s fascinating how much Flow successfully attempts an emotional unity between vaguely religious faith and the emotional vitality of video games.
There’s a sense from Flow’s imagery and loose themes that the film is hinting at a biblical narrative. Iconographic allusions include the apocalyptic flood of the Old Testament, of course, as well as a whale that appears periodically throughout the film as a vague harbinger of sorts, calling to mind religious associations made to this animal in the biblical tale of Jonah and Moby Dick, though the Flow whale is unequivocally portrayed as a positive force and saves the life of the cat whenever it appears. A beautiful scene towards the end of the second act seems to harken to a rapture-esque scenario. Spiritually however, the film makes it clear it has a faith of its own not unlike that of religion. I attended a Q&A with Zilbalodis and writer/producer Matīss Kaža at the Melbourne International Film Festival screening of Flow in 2024, and my question of whether the biblical angle to Flow was deliberate was answered with a resounding “No”, but they were receptive to it being one of many interpretations of the film’s themes. Ultimately I don’t think Flow is deliberately religious in tone, nor am I myself religious, and its emotional narrative borders on broad strokes storytelling regardless. However, the religious angle can work as a useful tool in this case to register the film’s iconographic usage of this imagery and spiritual narrative, holding a shared faith of survival and the divinity of the journey. At the emotional core of this film is this theme of both overcoming and living with the core animalistic instincts that pilot these animals, especially those that, at first, ensure that they cannot get along. In the end, some of the animals don’t ‘learn’ anything and continue to be animals. It has a beautifully messy recognition of how the animal kingdom works in conjunction with humanity’s own structures and standards of comradery and perseverance. Think of it like a more life-affirming version of Noah’s Ark that holds more sympathy and belief in the conviction of the animals of Earth.
In an era of ever-increasing shake-ups in the animation world, it’s no wonder the best animated feature film of the past year was made by a small team of Latvian filmmakers in Blender. I think Zilbalodis and the teams at Dream Well Studio, Sacrebleu Productions and Take Five have created something truly singular, utilising the cuteness and animalistic tendencies of its central animals through the lens of an almost primordial or boots-on-the-ground form of animation filmmaking to tell this story of survival in the face of beautiful catastrophe, and perhaps making a remark on what will remain of us once we’re gone.
Flow is screening in cinemas now. For tickets and more info, click here.