Flow (2024)

One animated film from last year that flew under many people’s radars was Flow (Latvian: Straume), which I first heard about through Animation Magazine. The visual style and basic premise were enough to intrigue me, but I had a hard time finding a theater in my area that was showing it, let alone at a more convenient time, when I remembered to look for tickets. The movie winning the Golden Globe for Best Animated Feature increased my interest further, though I opted to wait until it became available to rent through Amazon Prime Video to finally watch it. I will admit, however, that I was mildly distracted by the ongoing SoCal fires at the time of my initial viewing due to living within the vicinity, but I still did my due diligence to give the film as much of my attention as possible. With that said, although I thoroughly enjoyed the movie, I still think the Golden Globe should have gone to fellow contender The Wild Robot.

A black cat lives alone in an abandoned home, leaving only to forage for food and fend off other animals. Following a great flood, the cat finds safety in a passing boat and must learn to work together with a capybara, a ring-tailed lemur, a yellow Labrador Retriever and a secretarybird to survive.

Told entirely without dialogue, the story is a compelling one, with multiple story arcs told entirely through visuals and body language, with a message about overcoming odds that feels relevant now more than ever. The minimal cast also makes it easy to get attached to at least one of the animal characters, which aside from the cat included the secretarybird for me. While easy to follow for the most part, some parts of it feel open to interpretation, particularly when some light mystical elements get involved in the second half. I also wasn’t really moved emotionally as much as I anticipated, in part because of said muddy plot elements, though the aforementioned viewing conditions likely didn’t help.

The film is particularly impressive from a visual standpoint, as while it has a painterly look, it features some impressively realistic animal animations and water effects. What makes this impressive, in a first for the medium, is that the whole film was rendered entirely in Blender, a free and open-source 3D software. Adding to this is that, with the noted exception of the capybara, all of the animal sounds are sourced from the actual animals portrayed in the movie, which shows a great attention to detail that goes a long way in bringing its world to life. At times this also brought to mind the 2022 game Stray, which featured a similar setting and attention to detail regarding its cat protagonist.

While Flow represents a technical achievement in animation, especially with it being an independent production, I overall found some of its contemporaries, particularly The Wild Robot, to have a stronger emotional impact on me. That’s not to say I didn’t enjoy it, as I would still recommend watching it and I liked it enough to want to give it another shot under better circumstances.