Flow, the cat who was no longer afraid of water: a visual and narrative shock (review)

A rereading of the Flood through the eyes of a cat playing with its skin each time the waters rise. An ultra-immersive film that will be a landmark in the history of animation.

In 2019, Gints Zilbalodis appeared on our radars with a first meditative and poetic feature, Elsewhereproduced entirely alone on his computer – quite a feat. Five years later, the Latvian director has this time surrounded himself with a large team to bring to life the no less insane Flow, the cat who was no longer afraid of water, animated film without words which features an adorable cat waking up in a world where humanity seems to have evaporated. We barely have time to question the reasons for this disappearance when a tidal wave engulfs a large part of the land. The water only rising, the cat then finds refuge on a boat, the only chance of survival, with a group of disparate animals: a capybara taking a nap, a not very smart labrador, a heron abandoned by his family and a thieving lemur.

Personalities immediately embodied by the astonishing realism of the noises and movements of the creatures, with minimalist 3D imagery that borrows from video games. This would be enough to nourish a Disney-style tale from Northern Europe, but Zilbalodis imposes a tone of its own, light and serious at the same time, minimalist and massive (the gigantism of the sets), sensory and dreamlike.

“ It is Ice Age directed by Alfonso Cuaron », as a sagacious colleague rightly sums it up. It is indeed difficult not to think of Son of man in front of these breathtaking sequence shots of chases, where the camera movements constantly remind us of the emergency and the death that awaits. Flow… is also a narrative tour de force which produces mythology without uttering a single word, just with the help of remains of human structures allowing us to envisage a flourishing past (a sort of temple, a sunken city with architectural indefinable…). Constantly immersive, the film plays on our anthropomorphic bias without ever departing from a cat-level gaze. A fable, a great one, moving and sincere, about the power of the collective. And certainly a little about the uselessness of our species, even its responsibility for the collapse of the world. The animal kingdom begins here.

Of Gints Zilbalodis. Duration 1 hour 25 minutes. Released October 30, 2024